SVC Videoconferencing Call Adaptation and Bandwidth Usage in SDN Networks

Videoconferencing applications have strong latency requirements and consume large portions of a network's bandwidth. Current videoconferencing solutions are not efficiently implemented as they often rely on a central server and do not leverage network layering services. In this paper, we investigate the impact of using Scalable Video Coding and Software Defined Networking techniques on videoconferencing. Specifically we propose an algorithm capable of reducing the bandwidth consumed by videoconferencing using Software Defined Networking to compute and deploy multicast trees, as well as taking advantage of the Scalable Video Coding layering feature that allows to sacrifice video quality for usability purposes. We show that by smartly dropping video layers at specific locations in the network, the overall bandwidth usage by videoconferencing decreases, and in a separate capacity study we show that our solution allows networks to support more videoconferencing calls as compared to existing solutions.