Fair bandwidth sharing for feedback controlled VBR video traffic

Abstract

VBR encoders that modulate their bit rate in response to network feedback allow efficient use of network bandwidth and provide a graceful degradation in image quality during periods of congestion. Unfortunately, existing feedback control schemes exhibit unfairness in service, with sources that transmit more complex images sequences seeing a greater reduction in image quality during periods of overload. In this paper, we present a new feedback control scheme, called fair bandwidth sharing (FBS), that provides fair service while still allowing for efficient usage of bandwidth and graceful degradation in image quality under overloads.