Fundamental limits and tradeoffs of providing deterministic guarantees to VBR video traffic

  • Authors:

  • Edward W. Knightly;Dallas E. Wrege;Jörg Liebeherr;Hui Zhang

  • Affiliations:

  • EECS Department, U.C. Berkeley and Sandia National Laboratories;Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1995 ACM SIGMETRICS joint international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

Compressed digital video is one of the most important traffic types in future integrated services networks. However, a network service that supports delay-sensitive video imposes many problems since compressed video sources are variable bit rate (VBR) with a high degree of burstiness. In this paper, we consider a network service that can provide deterministic guarantees on the minimum throughput and the maximum delay of VBR video traffic. A common belief is that due to the burstiness of VBR traffic, such a service will not be efficient and will necessarily result in low network utilization. We investigate the fundamental limits and tradeoffs in providing deterministic performance guarantees to video and use a set of 10 to 90 minute long MPEG-compressed video traces for evaluation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we are able to show that, in many cases, a deterministic service can be provided to video traffic while maintaining a reasonable level of network utilization. We first consider an ideal network environment that employs the most accurate deterministic, time-invariant video traffic characterizations, Earliest-Deadline-First packet schedulers, and exact admission control conditions. The utilization achievable in this situation provides the fundamental limits of a deterministic service. We then investigate the utilization limits in a network environment that takes into account practical constraints, such as the need for fast policing mechanisms, simple packet scheduling algorithms, and efficient admission control tests.