Omnidirectional Adaptive Bitrate Media Delivery Using MPTCP/QUIC over an SDN Architecture

Omnidirectional streaming requirements can be an impediment to delivering virtual reality (VR) quality con- tent at scale. Leveraging multihomed device network options becomes a viable approach to ease congestion. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) has the ability to utilize multiple networks simultaneously, but its performance can suffer from excessive overhead due to its use of large reordering buffers. In this paper, we propose a unique approach to removing this limitation with a software-defined networking architecture. Using Mininet with Floodlight controllers to manage available paths, we designed a framework that actively manages Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) and/or MPTCP network usage based on network characteristics. Testbed experiments reveal that the start- up buffering delay is decreased by up to 60% or more when using our algorithm in networks with packet loss rates above 2%. These results are favorable even when compared against another modern multipath algorithm that attempts to remedy this issue. Our analysis shows our framework outperforms standard MPTCP in network usage efficiency by up to 50% at packet loss rates above 1%.