Abstract
The increase in high-bandwidth connections and high-speed computers has spurred the growth of streaming media across the Internet. While there have been a number of studies measuring the performance of traditional Internet traffic, there have not been sufficient empirical measurements ofvideo performance especially for commercial videos across the Internet. The lack of empirical workthat measures streaming video traffic may arise from the lack of effective video performance measurement tools. In this paper, we present RealTracer, a set of tools for measuring the performance of RealNetworks Video. RealTracer includes RealTracker, a customized video playe that plays RealNetworks Video from pre-selected playlist and records user-centric video performance information. RealTracer also includes RealData, a data analysis tool that helps manage,parse and analyze data captured by RealTracker. We describe the software architecture and usage ofRealTracker and the usage of RealData, both publicly available for download. To illustrate the useof RealTracer, we present some results from a study that used RealTracker to measure RealVideo performance across the Internet. Using RealData, that study made several contributions to better understanding the performance of streaming video on the Internet. Typical RealVideos have high quality, achieving an average frame rate of 10 frames per second and very smooth playout, but very few videos achieve full-motion frame rates. Overall video performance is most influenced by the bandwidth of the end-user connection to the Internet, but high-bandwidth Internet connections are pushing the video performance bottleneck closer to the server.
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Yubing Wang earned M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Science and Technology of China in 1993 and M.S. in Computer Science from WPI in 2001. He is currently working in EMC Corp. as a principal software engineer, participating in the developments of several EMC NAS products. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science of WPI. His primary research interests include multimedia networking and distributed file system.
Mark Claypool earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Dr. Claypool joined the Computer Science department of WPI in 1997, receiving tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2004. He is also the Director of the Interactive Media and Game Development major at WPI, a 4-year degree in the principles of interactive applications and computer-based game development. His primary research interests include multimedia networking, congestion control, and network games.
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Wang, Y., Claypool, M. RealTracer—Tools for Measuring the Performance of RealVideo on the Internet. Multimed Tools Appl 27, 411–430 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-005-3757-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-005-3757-6