Network calculus and its application in streaming media transmission

The paper discusses the network calculus and its application for streaming media transmission in packet switched networks. With more and more new services and applications deployed over the Internet, the demands for a new theory and tool have been required tremendously. Conventional queueing theory has some limitations and difficulties in its application for the new services over Internet, since conventional queuing theory is based on stochastic theory. In a simple word, queuing theory assume each packet are independent with each other and conventional network mainly cares about packets. However, such assumption is not suitable for streaming media applications in the Internet. Network calculus provides a new approach to analysis the queueing problem in packet switched networks, particularly it provides a better analysis tool for streaming media. The network calculus is a flow based analysis tool and it will be much helpful for the information integrity and the transmission continuity for the streaming media. The paper introduces the network calculus and researches its applications for streaming media transmission.