SCTP multi-streaming: Study of transmission of partially reliable and reliable data using dynamic stream priorities

On-line multimedia experiences are often bandwidth-intensive. The majority of internet users still rely on dial-up modem or DSL connections which are often inadequate for comfortable viewing of real-time multimedia data. The application end-points must then provide a way to transmit multiple data-types in parallel and must effectively respond to periods of insufficient bandwidth. Our work investigates using dynamic priorities with both partially reliable (PR) and reliable data.; In this thesis we propose a scheduling algorithm to dynamically prioritize the streams depending on the timed-reliability factor of the PR-data. Through ns-2 simulations we compare the dynamic priority SCTP with static priority SCTP using an application with two streams, one sending a low bit-rate, short delay, partially reliable data and the second sending a high bit-rate partially reliable data. During periods of low-bandwidth availability we demonstrate that with this scheme, both the streams are given a fair chance to transmit data based on their timed-reliability factor, unlike the static priority scheme which gives preference to the higher priority stream. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...