Fast Startup Multicast Streaming on Operator IPTV Networks using HESP
Egon Okerman, Johan Vounckx · 2021
Year after year, more video content is moving to adaptive video streaming systems using HTTP. Networks need to handle considerable load due to HTTP requiring unicast connections, and this load is often variable and unpredictable. As viewership grows, this load can lead to playback issues. Combined with other factors such as high latency and high startup delay, this often leads to poor quality of experience. We propose a solution where the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (typically sent for unicast only) is used to send content over IP multicast. This solution can leverage existing IPTV networks to reduce overall bandwidth consumption while ensuring fast startup and low end-to-end latency. The latency of our solution is equal to that of HESP sent over unicast in most situations and even improves upon it in poor network environments. Although non-negligible bandwidth overhead is introduced to account for packet loss, transmitting content over IP multicast results in predictable and much more manageable network load while preserving the advantages of existing HTTP streaming protocols.