Control of MPEG-2 video traffic in an ATM environment

Variable bit rate traffic generated by multimedia and video services may experience cell loss when transmitted over ATM networks. In a video distribution environment, where several links with different capacities are employed, it is likely to find nodes with less capacity than the offered traffic by the distributed bit stream. Either high cell loss rate should be allowed at these nodes or the source has to comply with the higher constraint penalising other users. We present a generic congestion control scheme capable of being used with either type of MPEG-2 video sources, real-time encoders or video servers. The scheme is based on a low delay post-processing mechanism capable of reducing the bit rate of an encoded bit stream without drift. Its application in video distribution and congestion control is presented. The results show good performance in all cases.