UPnP-based QoSagent for QoS-guaranteed streaming service in home networks

Abstract

As A/V (audio/video) services over IP networks become popular, there has been much interest in using home networking technology to provide QoS (quality of service)- guaranteed A/V services. For QoS-guaranteed A/V services, reservation or allocation schemes are usually used to control the demand of network bandwidth. However, these approaches have some limitations that discourage practical implementations. It requires that all applications participate in the reservation system. It can not manage actual network resource status, since it does not provide dynamic network resource monitoring scheme. To provide QoS-guaranteed A/V services, it is necessary to know actual network resource status, although all applications are not in the reservation system. We propose a middleware module that can improve existing reservation-style approaches, namely QoSAgent, based on standard home networking pro- tocol. Based on UPnP (universal plug and play) QoS services, the QoSAgent monitors network resource status and adapts its streaming services to varying network status. From the VideoLAN-based implementation, we confirm that the proposed approach can be used for QoS-guaranteed streaming services in home networks. I. INTRODUCTION With widespread Internet technologies, and the increasing number of users owning networking devices at home, home networks are becoming popular. The home network has been driven by home automation. Most of the applications that have been delivered to users are for home automation (11). Those applications include security, lighting, heating, cooking, washing appliances, etc. However, most recently, the effort on the development of home networks has been driven by the emerging A/V (audio/video) technologies like HD (high def- inition) video and QoS (quality of service) technologies (12). It appears to be a large demand in the home network area for the use of applications such as real-time communication with A/V appliances, multimedia album, and high-quality streaming service, all of which requiring QoS. Likewise, as A/V services have become popular in the home networks, there has been much interest in using home net- working technology to provide QoS-guaranteed A/V services. Basically, the demand for QoS-guaranteed A/V services like contents transferring and real-time communication with A/V appliances may exceed the bandwidth or latency constraints of the home network or portions of the home network. Excess demand may cause delivery delay. Since delivery of some of digital media files are time sensitive, delivery delay leads to rendering errors and artifacts that are annoying to users. It has been proposed that reservation or allocation schemes be used to control the demand of network bandwidth (1), (13). Unfortunately, reservation schemes has some limitations. These approaches are based on the premise that the entire system of user, applications, and digital media files may be completely controlled. These approaches require all users and applications to accurately know the amount of network resources they will need priori. It requires that all applications participate in the reservation system so that accurate allocation and calculation can be performed. It, also, can not manage actual network resource status, when applications that are not in reservation system consume network resource. These limitations have discouraged practical implementations. Thus, based on standard home networking protocol, we propose middleware approach that can improve existing reservation-style approaches (especially UPnP QoS architec- ture v1.0) and try to provide the QoS-guaranteed A/V services based on monitoring and adaptation. The proposed approach