Design and functionality test of chunked video streaming over emulated multi-path OpenFlow network

In OpenFlow-based SDN environment, we have designed and implemented the middle-box and splitting functionalities for chunked video streaming over multiple concurrent paths and constructed a prototype system to evaluate these functionalities with various scenarios of splitting ratio. The multi-path chunked video streaming has been tested in the Open vSwitch (OVS)-enabled Mininet-emulated network testbed. The reported results of packet loss ratio, mean/standard deviation of packet delay demonstrate that multi-path video streaming method can be beneficially applied in the network when the capacity of the main path alone is not enough to carry the whole incoming packets of video stream and the employed chunk splitting ratio decomposes the incoming packet rate to match the capacity of available paths. However, this multi-path video streaming method is not recommended when the main path capacity already suffices for carrying out the incoming packets of video stream due to the increased implementation complexities. As an ongoing research, since matching of chunk splitting ratio to the capacity of available paths can affect greatly the resultant received video quality, this poses a new practical challenge when path capacity is time varying and stochastic in nature.