System design and network requirements for interactive multimedia

In recent years, there has been a strong interest in transmitting compressed video over packet switched networks, such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM). Previous work has dealt with transmitting MPEG over constant bit rate (CBR) and variable bit rate (VBR) services of ATM. The available bit rate (ABR) service of ATM is expected to be much more cost effective than CBR or VBR. However, there hasn't been much work done on running interactive client/server applications (for example, video on demand) over ABR. We have developed a framework to design interactive video systems transmitting MPEG video over the ATM ABR service. We have developed models to determine the network connection parameters required to run interactive client/server multimedia applications over an ATM network using the ABR service. We solve our model using real-time dynamic equilation (RTDE) analysis. We conclude that by proper dimensioning of the buffers at the client and the server, it is possible to run interactive video over the ATM ABR service.