Buffer-driven adaptive video streaming with TCP-friendliness

Existing streaming mechanisms have no consideration for the characteristics of streaming applications because they only consider network stability. In this paper, in order to overcome limitations of the previous work on video streaming, we propose a new adaptive video streaming mechanism. The proposed mechanism includes more sophisticated features that consider both network and user requirements. From the network viewpoint, the proposed mechanism can estimate the TCP-friendly rate suitable for current network conditions. Therefore, it is able to adjust the sending rate of video stream in a TCP-friendly manner and improves the network stability by reducing the packet losses. From the user viewpoint, our mechanism provides the smooth playback by preventing the receiver buffer underflow or overflow. Moreover, it is designed to take into consideration the streaming video content. Through the simulation, we prove that our mechanism efficiently uses the buffer resources and provides improved network stability with TCP-friendliness and smooth playback. (c) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.