Network Characteristics of Video Streaming Traffic

Abstract

Video streaming represents a large fraction of Internet traffic. Surprisingly, little is known about the network characteristics of this traffic. In this paper, we study the network characteristics of the two most popular video streaming services Netflix and YouTube. We show that the streaming strategies vary with the type of the application (Web browser or native mobile application), and the type of container (Silverlight, Flash, or HTML5) used for video streaming. In particular we identify three different streaming strategies that produce traffic patterns from non-ack clocked ON-OFF cycles to bulk TCP transfer. We then present an analytical model to study the potential impact of these streaming strategies on the aggregate traffic and make recommendations accordingly.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA552150

Entities

People

  • Arnaud Legout
  • Ashwin P. Rao
  • Chadi Barakat
  • Don Towsley
  • Walid Dabbous
  • Yeon-sup Lim

Organizations

  • University of Massachusetts Amherst

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Coding
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Containers
  • Data Rate
  • Data Transmission
  • Engineering
  • Internet
  • Mobile Application Software
  • Mobile Devices
  • Mobile Operating Systems
  • Networks
  • Operating Systems
  • Social Media
  • Steady State
  • Streaming Media
  • Web Browsers

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Computer Networking
  • Systems Analysis and Design