Trickle: Rate Limiting YouTube Video Streaming
Abstract
YouTube traffic is bursty. These bursts trigger packet
losses and stress router queues, causing TCP’s
congestion-control algorithm to kick in. In this paper,
we introduce Trickle, a server-side mechanism that
uses TCP to rate limit YouTube video streaming. Trickle
paces the video stream by placing an upper bound on
TCP’s congestion window as a function of the streaming
rate and the round-trip time. We evaluated Trickle on
YouTube production data centers in Europe and India
and analyzed its impact on losses, bandwidth, RTT, and
video buffer under-run events. The results show that
Trickle reduces the average TCP loss rate by up to 43%
and the average RTT by up to 28% while maintaining
the streaming rate requested by the application.
losses and stress router queues, causing TCP’s
congestion-control algorithm to kick in. In this paper,
we introduce Trickle, a server-side mechanism that
uses TCP to rate limit YouTube video streaming. Trickle
paces the video stream by placing an upper bound on
TCP’s congestion window as a function of the streaming
rate and the round-trip time. We evaluated Trickle on
YouTube production data centers in Europe and India
and analyzed its impact on losses, bandwidth, RTT, and
video buffer under-run events. The results show that
Trickle reduces the average TCP loss rate by up to 43%
and the average RTT by up to 28% while maintaining
the streaming rate requested by the application.
Research Areas
