| Abstract: | Streaming video over IP networks has become increasingly popular; however, compared to traditional data traffic, video streaming places different demands on quality of service (QoS) in a network, particularly in terms of delay, delay variation, and data loss. In response to the QoS demands of video applications, network techniques have been proposed to provide QoS within a network. Unfortunately, while efficient from a network perspective, most existing solutions have not provided end‐to‐end QoS that is satisfactory to users. In this paper, packet scheduling and end‐to‐end QoS distribution schemes are proposed to address this issue. The design and implementation of the two schemes are based on the active networking paradigm. In active networks, routers can perform user‐driven computation when forwarding packets, rather than just simple storing and forwarding packets, as in traditional networks. Both schemes thus take advantage of the capability of active networks enabling routers to adapt to the content of transmitted data and the QoS requirements of video users. In other words, packet scheduling at routers considers the correlation between video characteristics, available local resources and the resulting visual quality. The proposed QoS distribution scheme performs inter‐node adaptation, dynamically adjusting local loss constraints in response to network conditions in order to satisfy the end‐to‐end loss requirements. An active network‐based simulation shows that using QoS distribution and packet scheduling together increases the probability of meeting end‐to‐end QoS requirements of networked video. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
