High-Accuracy Packet Pacing on Commodity Servers for Constant-Rate Flows

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of high-quality packet pacing for constant-rate packet consumption systems, with strict buffering limitations. A mostly-software pacing architecture is developed, which has minimal hardware requirements, satisfied by commodity servers – rendering the proposed solution easily deployable in existing (data-centre) infrastructures. Two algorithms ( free-running and frequency-controlled pacing, for explicitly and implicitly indicated target rates, respectively) are specified, and formally analysed. The proposed solution, including both algorithms, is implemented, and is tested on real hardware and under real conditions. The performance of these implementations is experimentally evaluated and compared to existing mechanisms, available in general-purpose hardware. Results of both exhaustive experiments, and of an analytical modeling, indicate that the proposed approach is able to perform low-jitter packet pacing on commodity hardware, being thus suitable for constant rate transmission and consumption in media production scenarios.