Evaluation of gateway-based shaping methods for HTTP Adaptive Streaming

HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) is a streaming video technique commonly employed over best-effort networks. However, it is characterized by some issues that harm its quality of experience (QoE) in cases of daily use. The main use case of the present investigation involves HAS clients competing for bandwidth inside the same home network. Based on related work, we found that one of the most convenient solutions for this use case is to define a bandwidth manager, on the gateway side, that divides the available home bandwidth between HAS clients. Two main methods have previously been proposed to shape the HAS streams in accordance with the bandwidth manager´s direction and are referred to as gateway-based shaping methods: a highly renowned method, Hierarchical Token Bucket Method (HTBM), that uses the hierarchical token bucket queuing discipline, and another method, Receive Window Tuning Method (RWTM), that employs TCP flow control by handling only acknowledgment TCP packets. In this paper, we compare these two shaping methods. Results indicate that RWTM improves the QoE better than HTBM and does not add queuing delay. Results were validated through experimentation and objective QoE analytical criteria.