A multi-level approach to the transport of MPEG-coded video over ATM and some experiments

The CCITT (ITU-IT) has decided that the B-ISDN services of the future will be supported by asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), since it can offer the benefits of statistical multiplexing to bursty traffic, thus bringing down costs. There has been a considerable body of research done on the problem of congestion control in ATM networks, and several different approaches have been investigated. A four-level approach is proposed to the very specific problem of transporting MPEG encoded real-time video over ATM, and it is argued that this is consistent with current research results and directions. Then, using a real video source and the simplest option in the MPEG standard, the intra-frame coding, we experimentally evaluate alternatives for the implementation of the lower three levels, and show that the approach appears feasible.