A testbed for experimental evaluation of efficient multimedia delivery over lossy networks

Abstract

Multimedia transmission over lossy networks has been rapidly increasing, especially with the advent of different high-speed and cost-effective Internet technologies. Despite these technology advances, however, the quality of video streaming over lossy networks is still a major challenge towards obtaining the best quality of service. In this paper, a new experimental testbed that is based on the real-time media flow protocol (RTMFP) is proposed to enable researchers to investigate and optimise the effect of changing multiple key parameters relevant to the video-streaming quality. The impact of these parameters, which include video resolution, frames per second, and compression rate on the video quality are investigated with various settings of network packet loss. The obtained results and relationships between these parameters have led to development of a new algorithm that is capable of changing the parameters under study, in real time, according to the estimated packet loss towards maximum obtainable quality. Design details and experimental setup of the proposed testbed are presented along with key practical considerations and experimental evaluation results.