Rate-based active queue management with priority classes for better video transmission

Video streaming on the Internet often suffers from high frame loss rates due to fragmentation of large frames and inter-frame dependencies needed for high compression. We propose adding lightweight, priority-based queue management to Internet routers to significantly improve performance of video streaming. We extend a Rate-Based RED approach to support three priority classes and apply it to MPEG. The performance of the mechanism on video streams is measured, analyzed and compared with Drop-Tail and RED in terms of transport layer throughput, system fairness, application layer throughput and goodput, and video stream quality. Extensive simulation shows that our approach improves MPEG video stream quality and network system fairness over traditional RED under a variety of workloads.