A Novel Approach to Reduce the Unicast Bandwidth of an IPTV System in a High-Speed Access Network

Abstract

Channel change time is a critical quality of experience (QOE) metric for IP-based video delivery systems such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). An interesting channel change acceleration scheme based on peer-assisted delivery was recently proposed, which consists of deploying one FCC server (Fast Channel Change Server) in the IP backbone in order to send the unicast stream to the STB (Set-Top Box) before sending the normal multicast stream after each channel change. However, deploying such a solution will cause high bandwidth usage in the network because of the huge unicast traffic sent by the FCC server to the STBs. In this paper, we propose a new solution to reduce the bandwidth occupancy of the unicast traffic, by deploying the FCC server capabilities on the user STB. This means that, after each channel change request, the STB will receive the unicast traffic from another STB instead of the central server. By using this method, the unicast traffic will not pass through the IP network; it will be a peer-to-peer communication via the Access Network only. Extensive simulation results are presented to demonstrate the robustness of our new solution.

Minimizing Zapping Delay Using Adaptive Channel Switching with Personalized Electronic Program Guide

“…However, due to massive unicast data delivered by FCC servers to STBs, installing such a method would result in excessive network bandwidth utilization [23]. Consequently, Khabbiza [24] offered a novel technique to lessen zapping latency by utilizing a peer-to-peer strategy that reduces unicast traffic bandwidth utilization. The researchers advocated deploying FCC servers at the subscriber level instead of implementing a rapid channel change server on the IP backbone.…”

Peer-Assisted Content Delivery to Reduce the Bandwidth of TSTV Service in IPTV System

“…After joining the new channel and receiving the first multicast packet, the STB informs the FCC to stop sending the unicast stream [17][18][19]. Figure 3 shows the working mechanism of this technique.…”