Can We Multiplex IPTV and TCP?

Telecommunication service providers are racing to deliver IPTV/video on demand (VoD), voice, and data, the so called triple-play services. IPTV traffic, supported by the UDP protocol, has highly variable data rates and stringent quality of services (QoS) requirements in terms of delay and loss. Data and VoD flows are normally supported by TCP, which has its own congestion control loop to adjust the sending rate, so the traffic load is also highly dynamic. If IPTV and TCP traffic is simply multiplexed, their performance is difficult to predict and the competition between them will jeopardize their QoS. To efficiently utilize network resources and provide satisfactory QoS for both traffic types, we propose multiplexing IPTV and TCP traffic with the protection of a class based queuing (CBQ) scheme. We also develop an analytical framework to model the multiplexed IPTV traffic and TCP traffic with CBQ. The analytical results can be used as a guide to determine the admission region of IPTV and the CBQ parameters. Simulation results are presented which validate the analytical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution. By multiplexing IPTV and TCP traffic appropriately, network resources can be more efficiently utilized, the QoS of IPTV can be maintained, and TCP flows can obtain higher throughputs.