MSPlayer: Multi-Source and multi-Path LeverAged YoutubER
This addresses the challenge of streaming high-quality video on mobile devices for users, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing multi-path and multi-source techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of high-quality video streaming on mobile devices with limited bandwidth by proposing MSPlayer, a client-based solution that leverages multiple video sources and network paths. They experimentally demonstrated reduced start-up latency and improved streaming quality on a testbed and YouTube.
Online video streaming through mobile devices has become extremely popular nowadays. YouTube, for example, reported that the percentage of its traffic streaming to mobile devices has soared from 6% to more than 40% over the past two years. Moreover, people are constantly seeking to stream high quality video for better experience while often suffering from limited bandwidth. Thanks to the rapid deployment of content delivery networks (CDNs), popular videos are now replicated at different sites, and users can stream videos from close-by locations with low latencies. As mobile devices nowadays are equipped with multiple wireless interfaces (e.g., WiFi and 3G/4G), aggregating bandwidth for high definition video streaming has become possible. We propose a client-based video streaming solution, MSPlayer, that takes advantage of multiple video sources as well as multiple network paths through different interfaces. MSPlayer reduces start-up latency and provides high quality video streaming and robust data transport in mobile scenarios. We experimentally demonstrate our solution on a testbed and through the YouTube video service.