SDN-Enabled Adaptation of Videoconference Streams to Network Dynamics

Real-time interactive communications, such as videoconferencing, have strong QoS requirements. Adapting such communications to network dynamics needs network management capabilities that traditional networks cannot provide. Recently, SDN has shown to be a potential solution for solving these network adaptation challenges. In a companion paper written by our team, we have proposed a videoconferencing system using SVC multicast trees built over an SDN network. This system minimizes the overall bandwidth consumption and provides the highest possible QoS to the users although it is not adaptable to network dynamics happening over the lifetime of the communication. In this paper, we complement our system, by providing efficient algorithms able to modify the connections between the participants during a videoconference in order to timely react to network changes. The simulation results confirm the efficiency of our solution in terms of time processing and bandwidth savings.