Optimization of P2P-TV traffic by means of header compression and multiplexing

This paper studies the optimization of the traffic of a P2P-TV application (SOPCast). First, a traffic characterization is deployed, and it is observed that the service generates a high rate of small UDP packet bursts between peers. Then, an optimization method based on header compression and multiplexing is used for sending together the packets with the same destination. Two multiplexing policies are defined and tested. The first one is based on a fixed multiplexing period, and the other one defines an inter-packet time threshold, with the aim of multiplexing together a whole traffic burst. Simulations using real traffic traces of SOPCast are performed in order to estimate the expected savings for both policies. The results show that the efficiency is improved, achieving uplink bandwidth savings between 26% and 33% for the period-based policy, and roughly 35% for the policy based on a threshold. The amount of packets per second is also reduced by a factor of 10 in both cases. As a counterpart, the addition of a small retention delay is necessary, but the tests show that it does not impair user's experience.