Abstract

This paper presents an adaptive end-to-end protocol for quality of service-sensitive transport of real-time MPEG video using packet-level forward error correction in dynamic networks. The objective is to facilitate a user-specified QoS end-to-end - i.e., without special network support - for real-time MPEG video whose timing constraints rule out the use of retransmission-based congestion control and QoS provisioning schemes. The degree of redundancy - overcode in forward error correction - injected into the network is adjusted as a function of network state, decreasing when the network is well-behaved to minimize unnecessary network resource consumption, and increasing when it is not to compensate for adverse network effects so as to maintain an invariant level of end-to-end QoS. We describe an adaptive packet-level FEC protocol called AFEC and analyze its properties with respect to optimality and stability. The optimal control problem is nontrivial due to the fact that increased redundancy, b...

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