Video Transport over Heterogeneous Networks Using SCTP and DCCP

Abstract

As the internet continues to grow and mature, transmission of multimedia content is expected to increase and comprise a large portion of overall data traffic. The internet is becoming increasingly heterogeneous with the advent and growth of diverse wireless access networks such as WiFi, 3G Cellular and WiMax. The provision of quality of service (QoS) for multimedia transport such as video traffic over such heterogeneous networks is complex and challenging. The quality of video transport depends on many factors; among the more important are network condition and transport protocol. Traditional transport protocols such as UDP/TCP lack the functional requirements to meet the QoS requirements of today’s multimedia applications. Therefore, a number of improved transport protocols are being developed. SCTP and DCCP fall into this category. In this paper, our focus has been on evaluating SCTP and DCCP performance for MPEG4 video transport over heterogeneous (wired cum wireless) networks. The performance metrics used for this evaluation include throughput, delay and jitter. We also evaluated these measures for UDP in order to have a basis for comparison. Extensive simulations have been performed using a network simulator for video downloading and uploading. In this scenario, DCCP achieves higher throughput, with less delay and jitter than SCTP and UDP. Based on the results obtained in this study, we find that DCCP can better meet the QoS requirements for the transport of video streaming traffic.