Developing a Model for Optimizing Video Streaming Quality of Experience in Software-defined Networks

Abstract

In recent years, video streaming has become widely widespread, especially with the growth of users, mobile devices, and the availability and diversity of multimedia applications. Real-time video communications require quality of experience (QoE) awareness to provide satisfactory service to customers. Video streaming also requires a certain level of performance and a stable network to accommodate the quality of service (QoS) requirements of video users and applications, since QoS depends on network performance, this directly affects QoE. The emergence of software-defined networking (SDN) could eliminate current network limitations. Additionally, SDN's flexible programmability and global view capabilities could facilitate automated QoS control and management. The thesis proposed a video streaming adaptive QoS-based routing and resource reservation (VQoSRR) model, which gives SDN networks the ability to meet video demands and enhance user experience compared to the best-effort networks. In order to implement QoS-based routing (QBR), algorithms were developed for calculating routing, installing routing paths in the forwarding devices, and shifting traffic to an alternative path when QoE is violated. As well, queuing mechanisms were used to allocate resources based on the QoE requirements of video streaming. The traffic was differentiated based on video resolution QoE parameters to Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD). The Thesis results showed that resource reservation mechanisms combined with QoS-based routing provided effective control over routes and resources. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the proposed method obtained better viewing quality and increased the overall throughput of the network.