A reliable, adaptive network protocol for video transport

We present an adaptive network layer protocol for VBR video transport. It: (1) minimizes the buffer requirement in the network while guaranteeing that packets of VBR encoded video flows will not be lost, and (2) minimizes the end-to-end delay and jitter of frames. To achieve the former objective, we utilize a receiver-oriented adaptive credit-based flow control algorithm, and derive the necessary and sufficient number of buffers that should be reserved for ensuring its reliability. To minimize the end-to-end delay and jitter for VBR encoded video streams, we: (1) present bandwidth estimation techniques which exploit the structure of the video traffic, and (2) define a new fairness criteria for buffer allocation and then present a fair buffer/bandwidth allocation algorithm. We experimentally evaluate this protocol for a wide range of parameters and many network configurations, and demonstrate its adaptability. We also compare the performance of the protocol with numerous other schemes and demonstrate its suitability for video transport.