Price-Based Controller for Utility-Aware HTTP Adaptive Streaming

Stefano D'Aronco, Laura Toni, Pascal Frossard

Abstract: HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) can efficiently deliver video to multiple heterogeneous users in a fully distributed way. This might, however, lead to unfair bandwidth utilization among HAS users. Therefore, network-assisted HAS systems have been proposed, where network elements operate alongside clients' adaptation logic to improve user satisfaction. However, current solutions rely on the assumption that network elements have full knowledge of the network status, which isn't always realistic. In this work, the authors propose a practical network-assisted HAS system where the network elements infer the network link congestion using measurements collected from the client endpoints. The congestion-level signal is then used by the clients to optimize their video data requests. The authors' novel controller maximizes overall user satisfaction, and the clients share the available bandwidth fairly from a utility perspective, as demonstrated by simulation results obtained on a network simulator.