Network-Capacity Optimized Adaptive HTTP Streaming

• US 20140149557A1
• Filed: 07/07/2011
• Published: 05/29/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Einarsson, Torbjorn, Lohmar, Torsten
• Granted Patent: US 10,320,869 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/765 intermediate
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to a technique of adjusting the download of one or more adjustable content streams, the one or more content streams are provided in a network by a server (200) for streaming the one or more content streams to one or more clients (100a, 100b) and each of the one or more content streams comprises a plurality of content segments. A method embodiment comprises the steps of: generating a manifest file comprising one or more media bit rate candidates each of which indicating an encoded media data rate of the content segments of the one or more content streams, wherein the media data rate candidates are generate by considering a perceived quality of the one or more content streams; and manipulating the manifest file by adjusting at least one of the one or more media data rate candidates based on the available data rate between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) for downloading the content segments.

Claims

1. A method of adjusting the download of one or more adjustable content streams, wherein the one or more content streams are provided in a network by a server for streaming the one or more content streams to one or more clients (100a, 100b) and wherein each of the one or more content streams comprises a plurality of content segments, wherein the method comprises the steps of:

generating (502, 602) a manifest file comprising one or more media data rate candidates each of which indicating an encoded media data rate of the content segments of the one or more content streams, wherein the media data rate candidates are generated by considering a perceived quality of the one or more content streams; and

manipulating (504, 606) the manifest file by adjusting at least one of the one or more media data rate candidates based on the available data rate between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) for downloading the content segments.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of determining (604) the available data rate between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) for downloading the content segments.

3. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the perceived quality comprises a Mean Opinion Score “

MOS”

of the one or more content streams.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of determining (604) the available download speed is based on at least one of real-time statistics indicating the current load between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) and long term statistics indicating a typical load between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) during a predetermined time period.

5. The method of any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the manifest file comprises a plurality of media data rate candidates for each of the content segments of each of the one or more content streams and the step of adjusting the media data rate candidates in the step of manipulating the manifest file comprises removing all media data rate candidates indicating an encoded media data rate which lies over a predetermined threshold.

6. The method of any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the media data rate candidates are generated based on information indicating the type of the one or more content streams or one or more perceived quality parameters.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the one or more perceived quality parameters comprise one or more MOS values related to the one or more content streams.

8. The method of any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the manifest file comprises different media data rate candidates for the content segments of different ones of the one or more content streams.

9. The method of any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the one or more content streams comprise at least one of a sports content stream, a news content stream, a talk show content stream and a movie content stream.

10. The method of any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the step of manipulating the manifest file is repeatedly performed.

11. The method of any one of claims 1 to 10, wherein the streaming between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) comprises Hypertext Transfer Protocol “

HTTP”

streaming.

12. A computer program product comprising program code portions for performing the steps of one of claims 1 to 11 when the computer program product is run on a computer system.

13. The computer program product of claim 12, stored on a computer-readable recording medium.

14. A network node for adjusting the download of one or more adjustable content streams, wherein the one or more content streams are provided in a network by a server (200) for streaming the one or more content streams to one or more clients (100a, 100b) and wherein each of the one or more content streams comprises a plurality of content segments, wherein the network node comprises:

a generating component (202) for generating a manifest file comprising one or more media data rate candidates each of which indicating an encoded media data rate of the content segments of the one or more content streams, wherein the media data rate candidates are generated by considering a perceived quality of the one or more content streams; and

a manipulating component (204, 304, 404) for manipulating the manifest file by adjusting at least one of the one or more media data rate candidates based on the available data rate between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b) for downloading the content segments.

15. The network node of claim 14, wherein the network node comprises the server (200) providing the one or more content streams.

16. The network node of claim 15, wherein the network node comprises an intermediate network node between the server (200) and the one or more clients (100a, 100b).

17. The network node of claim 16, wherein the intermediate network node is a Deep Packet Inspection “

DPI”

node (300) which is adapted to determine the available download speed by means of DPI or wherein the intermediate network node is a HTTP proxy (400).

18. A system for adjusting the download of one or more adjustable content streams, wherein the one or more content streams are provided in a network by a server (200) for streaming the one or more content streams to one or more clients (100a, 100b) and wherein each of the one or more content streams comprises a plurality of content segments, wherein the system comprises the network node of any one of claims 14 to 17 and a client, wherein the client is adapted to request download of a content stream of the one or more content streams, to receive the manifest file, to download at least one of the content segments of the requested content stream by selecting a data rate for downloading the at least one content segment based on the media data rate candidates specified in the manifest file, to receive the manipulated manifest file and to download remaining ones of the content segments of the requested content stream by selecting a data rate for downloading the remaining ones of the content segments of the requested content stream based on the media data rate candidates specified in the manipulated manifest file.