Server-side Segment Selection For Low-latency Streaming - S4S

The OTT streaming growth is driven by the increasing number of wireless connected devices such as tablet and phones. An enabler for using these devices is ABR streaming (Adaptive Bitrate) that allows them to select at each moment the stream quality that best fits the available bandwidth. The overall experience is highly dependent on the bandwidth estimation. The current approach to bandwidth estimation in HTTP-based ABR players is challenged by the evolution toward low latency protocols (DASH CTE) or (HLS LL) which result in micro-burst of traffic. Indeed, estimation at the client-side, at the HTTP level, relies on the assumption that a relatively large segment of data is available and can be sent at the link-speed which is not the case anymore with low latency protocols. — To address this issue, we propose a novel scheme S4S, that allows players to interact with an S4S-enabled server in order to improve the overall experience. First, bandwidth estimation is done at the server-side, using transport's congestion control sender-side stats, leading to more precise estimates even in the presence of small burst, especially when using modern congestion control algorithms such as BBR or PCC. Second, we define a protocol for allowing the Network to control the bandwidth versus quality tradeoff.

Published

2020-11

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Low latency adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming for Live content

DOI

10.5594/M001926