Repair of streaming multimedia with adaptive Forward Error Correction

Internet multimedia applications have timing constraints that are often not met by TCP, the de facto Internet transport protocol, hence, most multimedia applications use UDP. Since UDP does not guarantee data arrival, UDP flows often have high data loss rates. Network data loss can be ameliorated by the use of Forward Error Correction (FEC), where a server adds redundant data to the flow to help the client repair lost data. However, the effectiveness of FEC depends upon the network burst loss rates, and current FEC approaches are non-adaptive or adapt without effectively monitoring this rate. We propose a Forward Error Correction protocol that explicitly adapts the redundancy to the measured network burst loss rates. Through evaluation under a variety of network conditions, we find our adaptive FEC approach achieves minimal end-to-end delay and low loss rates after repair.