ELBA: Efficient Layer Based Routing Algorithm in SDN

Adaptive streaming dynamically adapts video quality level according to the perceived device status and network conditions. It requires several representations of the same content, each encoded at different quality rates. As a representative example, H.264/SVC eliminates the requirement of redundant representations, improving the efficiency of caching and storage infrastructure. SVC video consists of a "Base Layer" and one or more of "Enhancement Layers". These layers have inter-dependencies and different QoS requirements. On another side, SDN allows forwarding tables to be adjusted dynamically, enabling us to route every individual flow differently. In this paper, we propose ELBA, an algorithm for scalable video streaming over SDN. ELBA utilizes the dynamic re-routing capability of SDN, to stream different layers of SVC coded video over possibly different suitable paths. In the proposed video streaming system, we use a novel mechanism to exchange information between the control plane and streaming servers. We have compared the performance of our approach with traditional Internet routing technique. Our evaluation results show that our proposal is not only feasible but in particular, it significantly outperforms the traditional Internet routing approach in terms of QoE.