Receiver Playout Buffer Requirement for TCP Video Streaming in the presence of Burst Packet Drops
Xuemin Shen, A. Wonfor · 2009
This paper studies the buffer size required for streaming video via TCP when burst segment loss is present. The ns-2 simulation tool is used to identify appropriate buffer sizes which are found to be closely correlated with the maximum delay induced by TCP retransmission. Three types of delay patterns are found under bursty drop conditions and expressions for maximum delay in each case are determined. TCP is found to be feasible for streaming with small bursts of dropped segments. However, large bursts of dropped segments induce multiple time-outs resulting in significant delay.