Video Streaming over HTTP/2: Design and Evaluation of Adaptive Server-Paced Push

Huei-Wen Ferng, Shan-Hsiang Shen, and Chih-Wei Lai

10.23919/JCN.2021.000007

Abstract : By using the server push of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) version 2.0, i.e., HTTP/2, along with the technique of server pacing, a novel scheme is proposed in this paper to deliver video segments. Furthermore, the load of bitrate adaptation is shifted to the server to avoid bandwidth competition and wastage caused by bitrate switching. It can be explicitly shown that no significant overhead is brought by our proposed scheme via complexity analysis. Moreover, our proposed scheme generates one HTTP request only. With extensive simulations, we successfully demonstrate that it is superior over the closely related schemes in terms of the average achievable bitrate, the number of buffer stalls, the ratio of unclaimed pushes, etc., in particular, when a harsh network condition arises. 

Index terms : Adaptive, Bitrate adaptation, HTTP/2, server pacing, server push, video streaming.