On Maximizing QoE in AVC-Based HTTP Adaptive Streaming: An SDN Approach

HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) is quickly becoming the dominant video delivery technique for adaptive streaming over the Internet. Still considered as its primary challenges are determining the optimal rate adaptation and improving both the quality of experience (QoE) and QoE-fairness. Recent studies have shown that techniques providing a comprehensive and central view of the network resources can lead to greater gains in performance. By leveraging software defined networking (SDN), the current study proposes an SDN-based approach to maximize QoE metrics and QoE-fairness in AVC-based HTTP adaptive streaming. The proposed approach determines both the optimal adaptation and data paths for delivering the requested video files from HTTP-media servers to DASH clients. In fact, the proposed approach, which includes a set of application modules, is centrally executed by an SND controller in a time slot fashion. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model in such a way that it applies defined policies, e.g. setting priorities for clients in obtaining video quality. We conduct experiments by emulating the proposed framework in Mininet using Floodlight as the SDN controller. In terms of improving QoE-fairness and QoE metrics, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated by a comparison with different approaches.