Simulation-based performance study of YouTube service in 3G LTE

In this paper, we study the performance of the YouTube service over 3G Long Term Evolution (LTE) by means of dynamic network simulations. We consider a typical configuration of an LTE network for TCP traffic and the traffic generation model for YouTube `Flash´ videos downloaded onto a personal computer (PC). Furthermore, in order to achieve more reliable results in the simulations, the main configuration parameters are obtained for TCP Cubic congestion control algorithm used by YouTube media servers. The results obtained show that: the number of pauses experimented by users during video download are heavily influenced by the cell load, but the same is not true for pause duration; most of the packet losses occur during initial burst due to the TCP adaptation to the BDP of the link, and, unlike packet losses during throttling phase, these are not depend on radio link quality; and in most cases the user do not use the maximum data rate achievable in the LTE interface.