PARK: a paused-and-run k-stream multimedia synchronization control scheme

In the paper, we propose the pause-and-run approach for k-stream (PARK) multimedia presentations over the Internet to achieve reliable transmission of continuous media. The main characteristics of the PARK approach are as follows: (i) to achieve reliable transmission of continuous media, PARK adopts TCP instead of UDP; (ii) since the slow-start scheme is embedded in TCP, a novel flow adaptation scheme is proposed to reduce the overhead of the network and end hosts. The server adapts its transmission rates to the buffer situation of the client and prevents the client's buffers from overflow and underflow as much as possible; (iii) with the provision of multiple-stream synchronization and multi-level adaptation control, the client achieves smooth multimedia presentations and achieves graceful presentation degradation when the resources are insufficient.