A multicast architecture of SVC streaming over OpenFlow networks

In video streaming service, multicast mode is a promising way to complement unicast delivery of content, since it deliveries the video content to a broad range of receivers. It is considered as an efficient scheme to reduce redundant traffic in the networks. In this paper, we propose an OpenFlow based architecture for implementing Scalable Video Coding (SVC) multicast streaming. It enables in-network identifying, processing and manipulating the media streams, which makes prompt bitrate adaptation possible in response to network fluctuations. The heterogeneous video quality demand from the heterogeneous device also can be satisfied by customizing the multicast traffic through a centralized OpenFlow controller. We implement a testbed following the proposed architecture in our campus. With OpenFlow, we deploy IP multicast in a new way without Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) or any multicast addresses. Experiments implemented on the testbed show that our approach can provide a flexible and controllable video multicast streaming service and improve the usage of bandwidth resource in the condition of guaranteeing multicast receivers´ Quality of Experience (QoE).