QoE-Centric Control and Management of Multimedia Services in Software Defined and Virtualized Networks by ALCARDO ALEX BARAKABITZE A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics March 2020 Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author’s prior consent. Abstract Multimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deploy- ment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user’s demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions, or limited in available resources. This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks. The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel ap- proaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks. First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality. A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user’s QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of- the-art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link- failure free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases Survivability , resilience, i availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks. ii Contents Abstract i Table of Contents ii List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgements xii Author’s declaration xv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research Challenges and Motivations . .2 1.2 Research Aims and Objectives . .4 1.3 Summary of Thesis Contributions . .5 1.3.1 QoE-based Multimedia Flow Routing Mechanisms using SDN/NFV . .6 1.3.2 A QoE-Driven SDN based Resource Allocation Algorithm in Future Networks . .6 1.3.3 A Novel QoE-Centric Multipath Routing Algorithm for Video Streaming using SDN . .7 1.3.4 QoE Control and Management of Video Streaming Services in Softwarized Networks . .7 1.3.5 Multipath Protections and Dynamic Link Recovery in Soft- warized 5G Networks using Segment Routing . .8 1.4 Overview of Publications and Author Contributions . .8 1.4.1 Journal Papers . .9 1.5 Thesis Outline . 10 2 Literature Review 13 2.1 Introduction . 13 2.2 QoE Management for Multimedia Streaming Services . 14 iii 2.2.1 Quality of Exeprience (QoE): Definition . 14 2.2.2 QoE Monitoring and Measurement . 14 2.2.3 QoE Optimization and Control of Multimedia Services . 15 2.3 Multimedia Streaming Services over the Internet . 16 2.3.1 HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) Solutions . 16 2.3.2 Server and Network assisted DASH (SAND) . 19 2.3.3 Issues and Challenges of HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming . 21 2.4 Network Softwarization and Virtualization: The Promise of SDN and NFV in Future Networks . 22 2.4.1 Software Defined Networking (SDN) . 22 2.4.2 OpenFlow Standard . 25 2.4.3 Network Function Virtualization (NFV) . 27 2.4.4 Network Hypervisors, Containers and Virtual Machines . 29 2.5 QoE Management for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming using SDN/NFV: State-of-the-Art . 30 2.5.1 Server and Network-Assisted Optimization Approaches us- ing SDN . 31 2.5.2 QoE-Fairness and Personalized QoE-centric control in SDN 33 2.5.3 QoE-Centric Routing Mechanisms using SDN/NFV . 36 2.6 Summary . 38 3 Video Quality Management based on Queueing Mechanisms and QoE/QoS Policy in SDN 40 3.1 Introduction . 40 3.2 Related Work . 43 3.3 The Proposed Video Quality Management Algorithm over SDN . 44 3.3.1 Video Clips/Sequences . 46 3.3.2 Experimental Testbed based on SDN . 48 3.4 Performance Analysis and Evaluation of the Video Quality Man- agement Scheme. 49 3.4.1 Implementation of DASH without the Proposed Quality Management Scheme . 50 3.4.2 Implementation of DASH with the Proposed Quality Man- agement Scheme . 53 3.5 Summary . 55 4 QoE-Driven SDN based Resource Allocation Mechanism using Network Softwarization 56 4.1 Related Work . 57 4.2 System Architecture Overview and Task Assignment Model . 58 iv 4.3 Network Model and the Overall Utility Function . 60 4.4 QoE-driven Resource Allocation Mechanisms in SDN . 63 4.4.1 The proposed QoE-driven Resource Allocation and Task Assignment Algorithm . 64 4.4.2 Video Clips/Sequence used for Implementations . 64 4.4.3 Experimental Testbed using SDN . 65 4.5 Performance Evaluation and Results . 67 4.5.1 Bandwidth and End-to-End Delay Variations . 68 4.5.2 Effects of Packet Loss Variations on Video Quality . 69 4.5.3 Transmitted Video QoE with the Normalized QoS Values . 70 4.6 Summary . 71 5 QoE-Centric Multipath Routing for Multimedia Services using SDN/NFV 72 5.1 Related Work . 73 5.2 Principles and Basic Operation of MPTCP . 74 5.2.1 MPTCP Connection establishment between End-points . 76 5.2.2 Path Management and Scheduling . 77 5.2.3 Congestion Control and Avoidance in MPTCP . 79 5.3 A MPTCP over SDN-based Networks: Concepts and Descriptions . 80 5.4 Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing in SDN . 82 5.4.1 Mapping of Subflows Paths to SR Paths . 84 5.5 QoE-aware MPTCP SDN-based SR Adaptation Framework . 84 5.5.1 SDN Controller . 84 5.5.2 MPTCP-Flow Manager . 85 5.5.3 Segment Routing Module . 86 5.5.4 QoE-Management Module . 87 5.6 QoE-Centric Multipath Routing Algorithm (QoMRA) over SDN . 87 5.6.1 Video Clips/Sequence used for Experiments . 89 5.6.2 Experiemental Testbed based on SDN . 90 5.7 Experimental Evaluation and Results . 91 5.7.1 System Throughput . 91 5.7.2 Link Utilization . 92 5.7.3 The Impact of Segment Length on Throughput . 92 5.7.4 Video Quality Switches and Startup Delays in Video Streaming 93 5.8 Summary . 96 6 QoE Management of Video Streaming Services using MPTCP and SR in Softwarized Networks 97 v 6.1 Related Work . 98 6.2 QoE- Softwarization in Future Networks using SDN and NFV . 100 6.2.1 Application Scenario and Use Cases . 102 6.3 MPTCP Implementations over Software Defined and Virtualized Networks . 103 6.4 Path Protection and Traffic Recovery Mechanisms with Segment Routing in Softwarized Networks . 104 6.5 Service Chaining for OTT Service Providers using SR in Softwarized Networks . 106 6.6 The QoE-Control and Management Architecture of Video Streaming Services in Softwarized Networks . 108 6.6.1 Data Plane . 109 6.6.2 QoE Control and Management Plane (QoCoMa) . 109 6.6.3 Network Information Collector (NIC) . 109 6.6.4 MPTCP Module . 109 6.6.5 TE-Segment Routing Module . 110 6.6.6 QoE-Management Module for Softwarized Networks . 110 6.6.7 NFV Management and Orchestration (NFV MANO) . 110 6.6.8 Configuration Module . 111 6.6.9 Database Storage Module . 111 6.6.10 The SDN Controller . 112 6.7 System Model and QoE-based Multipath Source Routing Algorithm in Softwarized Networks . 112 6.7.1 QoE-Driven Multipath Routing and Quality Optimization in Softwarized Networks . 115 6.7.2 MPTCP Congestion Window Adaptation in Softwarized Networks . 118 6.7.3 Experimental Testbed & Setup . 121 6.7.4 Video Clips/Sequences Used for Experiments . 122 6.8 Experimental Results and Discussion . 123 6.8.1 System Throughput . 123 6.8.2 Video Reception Quality Measurements . 125 6.8.3 Measurements of Failure Recovery and Localization Time . 125 6.9 Summary . 132 7 Discussions, Future Work and Conclusions 135 7.1 Introduction .