Characterizing high-bandwidth real-time video traffic in residential broadband networks

Users are generating and uploading multimedia content to the Internet at an unprecedented rate. Residential broadband networks, however, have low upload capacities and large packet latencies. Wi-Fi networks that are used to access the Internet can suffer from high packet losses and contention latencies. All of these factors can result in poor video quality for residential users. Using packet traces and active measurements from houses, we study video quality in residential scenarios. We analyze the primary factors that contribute to poor performance and compare the performance over both the wireless and the broadband hop. Our measurements show that the upload capacities on the broadband links restrict the video bitrate (and hence the resolution) that can be transmitted. Residential wireless networks, however, have much higher capacities than the broadband links and, despite being densely deployed, do not see extended periods of high utilization. Our measurements shed light on the video transmission quality that is typically achievable from residences and are used to characterize the reasons behind quality deterioration.