Transmission Protocol Customization for Network Slicing: A Case Study of Video Streaming

In this article, we propose a software-defined networking (SDN)-based transmission protocol (SDTP) for futuregeneration networks. Different services are supported by dedicated network slices, each of which can be operated separately with a customized transmission protocol. In particular, we focus on video streaming services supported by in-network caching functions. By exploiting the flexibility of scalable video coding (SVC) and SDN control intelligence, we present an in-network bottleneck queue management strategy in conjunction with a novel selective caching policy (SCP) for congestion detection and mitigation. Additionally, an enhanced transmission (ET) scheme is devised to improve the video user experience by opportunistically requesting cached video packets when network conditions permit. The proposed protocol can adapt to traffic dynamics and varying service requirements, and it is shown to effectively alleviate network congestion and provide a balanced user experience. Extensive simulation results are presented to validate the proposed protocol in terms of in-network queue stability and userperceived video quality.