Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over Named Data Networking

Hermann Hellwagner (joint work with Daniel Posch and Benjamin Rainer)
Multimedia Communication Research Group
Institute of Information Technology
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (AAU), Austria

Modern digital video portals and streaming services typically store multiple, differently encoded variants of the available videos and employ adaptation techniques in order to adapt the volume and quality of the transmitted video data, in response to, e.g., dynamically varying network throughput conditions or specific constraints of end devices. In the past decade, client-driven adaptive video delivery techniques have become prevailing in practice, e.g., the standardized Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP(DASH) scheme or its proprietary variants. The Multimedia Communication research group at AAU has for several years explored DASH-type schemes. The spin-off company BITMOVIN successfully productized the software and extended it substantially. 

In this talk, though, we will present a second line of research that developed out of the first one, namely how to realize Dynamic Adaptive Streaming(DAS) over Named Data Networking (NDN), a specific and promising architecture variant of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) investigated as part of Future Internet initiatives. The basic NDN architecture was designed several years ago by Jacobson et al. at PARC to address – in the network layer – many functions of nowadays’ application layer and Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), like awareness of content chunks being transferred, caching, and content processing/adaptation. 

We will introduce the NDN concepts and the basic DAS over NDN mechanisms, derive upper performance bounds, and specifically discuss how a novel adaptive forwarding scheme can greatly improve performance and service quality for dynamic adaptive video streaming over NDN. Results have been gained via NDN simulations and the research group’s NDN testbed.

Brief Speaker Biography:

Hermann Hellwagner is a Full Professor of Informatics with the Institute of Information Technology, Alpen-Adria-Universität (AAU), Klagenfurt, Austria, leading the Multimedia Communication Research Group. He has edited several books, and has authored over 200 scientific papers on parallel computer architecture, parallel programming, and multimedia communication and adaptation. His research interests include distributed multimedia systems, multimedia communication, quality of service, and Information-Centric Networking (ICN). Dr. Hellwagner is a member of the IEEE, the ACM, the German Informatics Society (GI), and the Austrian Computer Society (OCG). He received many research grants from National (Austria, Germany) and European Funding Agencies and from industry. He served as a Vice President of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) from 2013 to 2016.