Welcome to the Multimedia Course: Multimedia System Standards
OER initiative for Building Collabrative Learning for Multimedia
Introduction
In the field of computer networking and other packet-switched telecommunication networks, the traffic engineering term quality of service (QoS) refers to resource reservation control mechanisms rather than the achieved service quality. Quality of service is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow.
Key Quality Features
Key qualities of traffic:When looking at packet-switched networks, quality of service is affected by various factors, which can be divided into “human” and “technical” factors. Human factors include: stability of service, availability of service, delays, user information. Technical factors include: reliability, scalability, effectiveness, maintainability, Grade of Service.
Many things can happen to packets as they travel from origin to destination, resulting in the following problems as seen from the point of view of the sender and receiver:
Low throughput
Low throughput
Due to varying load from other users sharing the same network resources, the bit rate (the maximum throughput) that can be provided to a certain data stream may be too low for realtime multimedia services if all data streams get the same scheduling priority.
Low Dropped Packets
Low Dropped packets
The routers might fail to deliver (drop) some packets if their data is corrupted or they arrive when their buffers are already full. The receiving application may ask for this information to be retransmitted, possibly causing severe delays in the overall transmission.
Low Errors
Low Errors
Sometimes packets are corrupted due to bit errors caused by noise and interference, especially in wireless communications and long copper wires. The receiver has to detect this and, just as if the packet was dropped, may ask for this information to be retransmitted.
Low Latency
Low Latency
It might take a long time for each packet to reach its destination, because it gets held up in long queues, or takes a less direct route to avoid congestion. This is different from throughput, as the delay can build up over time, even if the throughput is almost normal. In some cases, excessive latency can render an application such as VoIP or online gaming unusable.
Low Jitter
Low Jitter
Packets from the source will reach the destination with different delays. A packet's delay varies with its position in the queues of the routers along the path between source and destination and this position can vary unpredictably. This variation in delay is known as jitter and can seriously affect the quality of streaming audio and/or video.
Low Out of Order Delivery
Low Out-of-order delivery
When a collection of related packets is routed through a network, different packets may take different routes, each resulting in a different delay. The result is that the packets arrive in a different order than they were sent. This problem requires special additional protocols responsible for rearranging out-of-order packets to an isochronous state once they reach their destination. This is especially important for video and VoIP streams where quality is dramatically affected by both latency and lack of sequence.
References
 Ref Quality_of_service
Welcome to the Course !
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