Quality of service evaluation of video transmission over next generation networks

Abstract

The limitation of bandwidth for multimedia applications in NGNs such as voice and video telephony along with the increasing number of applications on the Internet, service classification and efficient resource management have all become quite challenging tasks. It is for this reason that service quality easily declines in NGNs especially when QoS mechanisms are not carefully scrutinized. In order to handle the different types of applications in the network as a way of improving the service quality in video and voice transmission, there has to be proper efficient resource and traffic management, and using routing protocols is one way in which this can be done. When it comes to real time applications in a network, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) are the sought after protocols to manage traffic for these applications. Our study presents an OPNET simulation based comparative evaluation between OSPF and EIGRP for real time applications. We designed three network models that were configured with OSPF, EIGRP and one with both OPSF and EIGRP routing protocols, and then used the QoS parameters of throughput, packet loss, convergence time, packet delay variation and end-to-end delay as our performance evaluation metrics. Our main source of network traffic was a typical video conferencing application. The results from the simulation indicated that combining both EIGRP and OSPF is far better placed to provide reliable Quality of Service than OSPF routing protocol when the main traffic being used in the network is video, but when dealing with a standalone real time application network, EIGRP is better than OSPF.