Supporting multimedia transport over UDP/TCP/IP-based networks

In this paper, we propose a set of quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms to support multimedia transport over UDP/TCP/IP-based networks. To support UDP-based multimedia applications in IP networks, it is necessary to provide a certain amount of bandwidth to the UDP applications within the network so that the performance of the UDP applications will not be seriously affected during periods of congestion. UDP flows do not typically back off when they encounter congestion. Thus, UDP flows aggressively use up more bandwidth than TCP friendly flows. Therefore, while it is important to have router algorithms support UDP flows by assigning appropriate bandwidth, it is also necessary to protect responsive TCP flows from unresponsive or aggressive UDP flows so that each user can get the desired QoS. To achieve this, we propose a set of router-based QoS mechanisms including a queue policy, a resource reservation scheme, and a metering scheme.