a brief history of streaming video in the internet

A Brief History of Streaming Video in the

InternetLessons Learned and Future Directions

ARS Lab - Carleton UniversityMay 2015

Gabriel Wainer / Stenio Fernandes

The lost decades (1/2)

● 70’s - not enough network capacity to support multimedia

● 80’s and early 90’s- researchers started to investigate ATM network support for audio and video○ This is “kind of” link+network layer technology○ It supports ABR, VBR, and CBR○ Investigation on transport protocols

The lost decades (2/2)

● 90’s - Improvements on audio and video CODECs○ ATM was going nowhere○ IP layer-only support would be the key

■ Discussion on Diffserv and Intserv started○ Some applications have arisen

■ Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft MSN, IP Telephony

An interesting decade (1/3)

● early to mid 2000’s○ Server side focus

■ Rate adaptation (rate control and shaping)● CODEC level● Network or Transport level

○ Proxy Caching / IP Multicasting○ Multiple video quality levels were unacceptable

■ Waste of storage resources○ Killer application

■ Skype

An interesting decade (2/3)

● mid to late 2000’s○ Real and fast advances on CODECs

■ Scalable Video (Multiple layers)■ Error Concealment Techniques

○ Network with enough capacity (at the edge)○ Killer applications

■ YouTube, Web Conferencing■ P2P Streaming

An interesting decade (3/3)● mid to late 2000’s

○ Design of Transport Protocols■ Beyond the RTP Stack (RCTP, RSTP, RTP)

● TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC)● Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)● eXplicit Control Protocol (XCP)

○ Support from Content Delivery Networks (CDN)■ Akamai

○ Still ONE long video file to be delivered (for VoD)

The Current State (1/2)

● 2010’s○ Lots of Pressure for Video Content○ Movie and Broadcast industry finally jumped into

this new model■ Hulu, Netflix, HBO

○ Wireless Networks with enough capacity■ Expensive though■ Prioritization of packets

● new 802.11, WiMAX, and 3G-5G strategies

The Current State (2/2)

● 2010’s○ Storage is not really an actual problem

■ Thanks to cloud computing services○ So, multiple video qualities are now feasible○ Middleboxes are still a problem

■ Blocking and throttling traffic■ Security features

○ So, the solution would be deliver multimedia streaming over HTTP

DASH was born

● Some issues before the design of DASH○ But, TCP is bad for delivering multimedia content

with strict playout time■ Due to the intrinsic congestion control and

reliability mechanisms○ And UDP will kill the network

■ May leading to congestion collapse○ And servers (even in a cloud environment) may not

handle flash crowds

Techniques for Adaptive Streaming

T. Stockhammer: “Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP-Design Priciples and Standards” In: MMSys ’11: Proceedings of the second annual ACM conference on Multimedia systems New York, NY, USA: ACM Press , Feb 2011, S. 133-144

Techniques for Adaptive Streaming

Luca De Cicco, Saverio Mascolo, and Vittorio Palmisano. 2011. Feedback control for adaptive live video streaming. In Proceedings of the second annual ACM conference on Multimedia systems(MMSys '11)

80’s and 90’s From 90’s to mid 2000’s From mid 2000’s to now

DASH was born (2/2)

● Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP○ Give the clients the power to decide on the

“quality” they want to receive■ Given the network conditions■ In real time

○ HTTP over TCP will pass through most middleboxes■ Use small (but not too small) chunks to “avoid”

TCP behaviour “issues” ○ Adaptation Logic is open for investigation

A typical DASH environment (1/2)

A typical DASH environment (2/2)

Control-Theoretic Approaches for the Adaptation Logic - Examples (1/5)

Hsiao YM, Chen CH, Lee JF, Chu YS. "Designing and implementing a scalable video-streaming system using an adaptive control scheme," Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transactions on , vol.58, no.4, pp.1314,1322, November 2012


De Cicco, L.; Caldaralo, V.; Palmisano, V.; Mascolo, S., "ELASTIC: A Client-Side Controller for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH)," Packet Video Workshop (PV), 2013 20th International , vol., no., pp.1,8, 12-13 Dec. 2013


Luca De Cicco, Saverio Mascolo, and Vittorio Palmisano. 2011. Feedback control for adaptive live video streaming. In Proceedings of the second annual ACM conference on Multimedia systems(MMSys '11)


Fortuna R, Grieco LA, Boggia G, Camarda P. “Quality adaptive end-to-end packet scheduling to avoid playout interruptions in Internet video streaming systems,” Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 83, Issue 8, August 2010, Pages 1489-1499


Ito, M., Fernandes, S., et al, “A Fine-Tuned Control-Theoretic Approach for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming Over HTTP”, IEEE International Symposium on Computers and Communications (IEEE ISCC 2015),, Lanarca, Cyprus, 2015



Two components: Yet Another Control System + State MachineState Machine: A pure control system is sufficient for buffer stabilization, but it does not ensure playout smoothness.

DASH in Advanced Scenarios

● 3GPP DASH

Research Challenges (1/2)

● Adaptation Logic○ Include raw factors

■ Application Level: # of stalls■ Transport Level: Buffer utilization■ Network Level: Packet losses and delays

○ More precise control■ Optimization strategies■ Control-Theoretic Approaches■ Markov-Modulated Decision Process

Research Challenges (2/2)

● New Networking Scenarios○ SDN and NFV

■ support from OR■ On top of

○ LTE to 5G Environments● Include Quality of Experience (QoE) Models in the

control loop● P2P-like Strategies for Scalable DASH Systems in

Wireless Environments

Some references1. Hsiao YM, Chen CH, Lee JF, Chu YS. "Designing and implementing a scalable video-streaming system using an adaptive

control scheme," Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transactions on , vol.58, no.4, pp.1314,1322, November 20122. Cicco L, Mascolo S, "An Adaptive Video Streaming Control System: Modeling, Validation, and Performance Evaluation,"

Networking, IEEE/ACM Transactions on , vol.22, no.2, pp.526,539, April 20143. Changuel, N.; Sayadi, B.; Kieffer, M., "Control of Multiple Remote Servers for Quality-Fair Delivery of Multimedia

Contents," Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on , vol.32, no.4, pp.746,759, April 20144. Ito MS, Antonello R, Sadok D, Fernandes S. “Network Level Characterization of Adaptive Streaming over HTTP

Applications”, In IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC’14)5. Jiang J, Sekar V, Zhang H. “Improving fairness, efficiency, and stability in HTTP-based adaptive video streaming with

FESTIVE”. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies (CoNEXT '12)

6. Li B, Wang Z, Liu J, Zhu W. “Two decades of internet video streaming: A retrospective view”. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 9, 1s, Article 33 (October 2013)

7. Li Z, Zhu X, Gahm J, Pan R, Hu H, Begen AC, Oran D. "Probe and Adapt: Rate Adaptation for HTTP Video Streaming At Scale," Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on , vol.32, no.4, pp.719,733, April 2014

8. Patras P, Banchs A, Serrano P. “A control theoretic scheme for efficient video transmission over IEEE 802.11e EDCA WLANs”. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 8, 3, Article 29 (August 2012)

9. Zhou C, Lin CW, Zhang X, Guo Z. "A Control-Theoretic Approach to Rate Adaption for DASH Over Multiple Content Distribution Servers," Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on , vol.24, no.4, pp.681,694, 2014

10. Yingsong Huang; Shiwen Mao; Midkiff, S.F., "A Control-Theoretic Approach to Rate Control for Streaming Videos," ultimedia, IEEE Transactions on , vol.11, no.6, pp.1072,1081, Oct. 2009

a brief history of streaming video in the internet

Internet

s storage

s real

s server

s improvements

s researchers

multimedia streaming

adaptive live video

s lots of pressure