Measurement study of RealMedia streaming traffic

Tianbo Kuang; Carey L. Williamson

doi:10.1117/12.473407

1 July 2002 Measurement study of RealMedia streaming traffic

Tianbo Kuang, Carey L. Williamson

Proceedings Volume 4865, Internet Performance and Control of Network Systems III; (2002) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.473407
Event: ITCom 2002: The Convergence of Information Technologies and Communications, 2002, Boston, MA, United States

Abstract

With the growing popularity of real-time audio/video streaming applications on the Internet, it is important to study the traffic characteristics of such applications and to understand their implications on network performance. In this paper, we present a measurement study of RealMedia streaming traffic, where the focus is both on the application-layer view (i.e., the output of the audio/video encoder) and on the network-layer view (i.e., the departure process for network packets emanating from the RealMedia server). Our main observation is that, although RealVideo can be compressed as Variable-Bit-Rate (VBR) at the application layer, it is often streamed as Constant-Bit-Rate (CBR) at the network layer. The audio and video streams have a hierarchical traffic structure: at large time scales (minutes), the overall bit rate is constant; at medium time scales (seconds), the packets have an on and off pattern due to the interleaving of audio and video; at fine-grain time scales (sub-second), back-to-back packet trains of two or more packets are often seen. We also note that most CBR-coded RealVideo streams are not long-range dependent (LRD). We attribute this difference to the CBR nature of the coder, which dynamically changes the video frame rate to keep the Internet traffic demands near-CBR over moderate time scales.

Citation Download Citation

Tianbo Kuang and Carey L. Williamson "Measurement study of RealMedia streaming traffic", Proc. SPIE 4865, Internet Performance and Control of Network Systems III, (1 July 2002); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.473407

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