An effective simple method to reduce bandwidth usage over an access link in IPTV multicast delivery services

In this paper, an effective simple method for reducing bandwidth usage over an access link in the IPTV multicast delivery services is proposed. The IPTV services are required to meet rapid channel switching as well as conventional analog TV services, but these services encounter issues to achieve rapid channel switching. One of significant problems is overloaded bandwidth consumption due to repeated channel switching behavior by users' channel request. This problem is caused by multicast leave processing, i.e., edge routers (ER) cannot stop transmission immediately due to the leave processing, so that ERs are required to stop unnecessary distributions. The feature of our proposed method is a reduction of bandwidth usage for transmitting IP multicast packets on the access link between ER and home access gateways (HG). We show effectiveness of the proposed method and efficiency of simple algorithm from the perspective of practical level through simulation evaluations.