Network Working Group                                      C. Burmeister
Request for Comments: 4586                                  R. Hakenberg
Category: Informational                                      A. Miyazaki
                                                              Panasonic
                                                                 J. Ott
                                      Helsinki University of Technology
                                                                N. Sato
                                                            S. Fukunaga
                                                                    Oki
                                                              July 2006


                       Extended RTP Profile for
     Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP)-Based Feedback:
               Results of the Timing Rule Simulations

Status of This Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
  not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
  memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

  This document describes the results achieved when simulating the
  timing rules of the Extended RTP Profile for Real-time Transport
  Control Protocol (RTCP)-Based Feedback, denoted AVPF.  Unicast and
  multicast topologies are considered as well as several protocol and
  environment configurations.  The results show that the timing rules
  result in better performance regarding feedback delay and still
  preserve the well-accepted RTP rules regarding allowed bit rates for
  control traffic.















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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction ....................................................3
  2. Timing Rules of the Extended RTP Profile for RTCP-Based
     Feedback ........................................................4
  3. Simulation Environment ..........................................5
     3.1. Network Simulator Version 2 ................................5
     3.2. RTP Agent ..................................................5
     3.3. Scenarios ..................................................5
     3.4. Topologies .................................................6
  4. RTCP Bit Rate Measurements ......................................6
     4.1. Unicast ....................................................7
     4.2. Multicast .................................................10
     4.3. Summary of the RTCP Bit Rate Measurements .................10
  5. Feedback Measurements ..........................................11
     5.1. Unicast ...................................................11
     5.2. Multicast .................................................12
          5.2.1. Shared Losses vs. Distributed Losses ...............13
  6. Investigations on "l" ..........................................14
     6.1. Feedback Suppression Performance ..........................16
     6.2. Loss Report Delay .........................................18
     6.3. Summary of "l" Investigations .............................18
  7. Applications Using AVPF ........................................19
     7.1. NEWPRED Implementation in NS2 .............................19
     7.2. Simulation ................................................21
          7.2.1. Simulation A - Constant Packet Loss Rate ...........21
          7.2.2. Simulation B - Packet Loss Due to Congestion .......23
     7.3. Summary of Application Simulations ........................24
  8. Summary ........................................................24
  9. Security Considerations ........................................25
  10. Normative References ..........................................26
  11. Informative References ........................................26



















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1.  Introduction

  The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is widely used for the
  transmission of real-time or near real-time media data over the
  Internet.  While it was originally designed to work well for
  multicast groups in very large scales, its scope is not limited to
  that.  More and more applications use RTP for small multicast groups
  (e.g., video conferences) or even unicast (e.g., IP telephony and
  media streaming applications).

  RTP comes together with its companion protocol Real-time Transport
  Control Protocol (RTCP), which is used to monitor the transmission of
  the media data and provide feedback of the reception quality.
  Furthermore, it can be used for loose session control.  Having the
  scope of large multicast groups in mind, the rules regarding when to
  send feedback were carefully restricted to avoid feedback explosion
  or feedback-related congestion in the network.  RTP and RTCP have
  proven to work well in the Internet, especially in large multicast
  groups, which is shown by their widespread usage today.

  However, the applications that transmit the media data only to small
  multicast groups or unicast may benefit from more frequent feedback.
  The source of the packets may be able to react to changes in the
  reception quality, which may be due to varying network utilization
  (e.g., congestion) or other changes.  Possible reactions include
  transmission rate adaptation according to a congestion control
  algorithm or the invocation of error resilience features for the
  media stream (e.g., retransmissions, reference picture selection,
  NEWPRED, etc.).

  As mentioned before, more frequent feedback may be desirable to
  increase the reception quality, but RTP restricts the use of RTCP
  feedback.  Hence it was decided to create a new extended RTP profile,
  which redefines some of the RTCP timing rules, but keeps most of the
  algorithms for RTP and RTCP, which have proven to work well.  The new
  rules should scale from unicast to multicast, where unicast or small
  multicast applications have the most gain from it.  A detailed
  description of the new profile and its timing rules can be found in
  [1].

  This document investigates the new algorithms by the means of
  simulations.  We show that the new timing rules scale well and behave
  in a network-friendly manner.  Firstly, the key features of the new
  RTP profile that are important for our simulations are roughly
  described in Section 2.  After that, we describe in Section 3 the
  environment that is used to conduct the simulations.  Section 4
  describes simulation results that show the backwards compatibility to
  RTP and that the new profile is network-friendly in terms of used



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  bandwidth for RTCP traffic.  In Section 5, we show the benefit that
  applications could get from implementing the new profile.  In Section
  6, we investigated the effect of the parameter "l" (used to calculate
  the T_dither_max value) upon the algorithm performance, and finally,
  in Section 7, we show the performance gain we could get for a special
  application, namely, NEWPRED in [6] and [7].

2.  Timing Rules of the Extended RTP Profile for RTCP-Based Feedback

  As said above, RTP restricts the usage of RTCP feedback.  The main
  restrictions on RTCP are as follows:

  - RTCP messages are sent in compound packets, i.e., every RTCP packet
    contains at least one sender report (SR) or receiver report (RR)
    message and a source description (SDES) message.

  - The RTCP compound packets are sent in time intervals (T_rr), which
    are computed as a function of the average packet size, the number
    of senders and receivers in the group, and the session bandwidth
    (5% of the session bandwidth is used for RTCP messages; this
    bandwidth is shared between all session members, where the senders
    may get a larger share than the receivers.)

  - The average minimum interval between two RTCP packets from the same
    source is 5 seconds.

  We see that these rules prevent feedback explosion and scale well to
  large multicast groups.  However, they do not allow timely feedback
  at all.  While the second rule scales also to small groups or unicast
  (in this cases the interval might be as small as a few milliseconds),
  the third rule may prevent the receivers from sending feedback
  timely.

  The timing rules to send RTCP feedback from the new RTP profile [1]
  consist of two key components.  First, the minimum interval of 5
  seconds is abolished.  Second, receivers get one chance during every
  other of their (now quite small) RTCP intervals to send an RTCP
  packet "early", i.e., not according to the calculated interval, but
  virtually immediately.  It is important to note that the RTCP
  interval calculation is still inherited from the original RTP
  specification.

  The specification and all the details of the extended timing rules
  can be found in [1].  Rather than describing the algorithms here, we
  reference the original specification [1].  Therefore, we use also the
  same variable names and abbreviations as in [1].





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3.  Simulation Environment

  This section describes the simulation testbed that was used for the
  investigations and its key features.  The extensions to the simulator
  that were necessary are roughly described in the following sections.

3.1.  Network Simulator Version 2

  The simulations were conducted using the network simulator version 2
  (ns2).  ns2 is an open source project, written in a combination of
  Tool Command Language (TCL) and C++.  The scenarios are set up using
  TCL.  Using the scripts, it is possible to specify the topologies
  (nodes and links, bandwidths, queue sizes, or error rates for links)
  and the parameters of the "agents", i.e., protocol configurations.
  The protocols themselves are implemented in C++ in the agents, which
  are connected to the nodes.  The documentation for ns2 and the newest
  version can be found in [4].

3.2.  RTP Agent

  We implemented a new agent, based on RTP/RTCP.  RTP packets are sent
  at a constant packet rate with the correct header sizes.  RTCP
  packets are sent according to the timing rules of [2] and [3], and
  also its algorithms for group membership maintenance are implemented.
  Sender and receiver reports are sent.

  Further, we extended the agent to support the extended profile [1].
  The use of the new timing rules can be turned on and off via
  parameter settings in TCL.

3.3.  Scenarios

  The scenarios that are simulated are defined in TCL scripts.  We set
  up several different topologies, ranging from unicast with two
  session members to multicast with up to 25 session members.
  Depending on the sending rates used and the corresponding link
  bandwidths, congestion losses may occur.  In some scenarios, bit
  errors are inserted on certain links.  We simulated groups with
  RTP/AVP agents, RTP/AVPF agents, and mixed groups.

  The feedback messages are generally NACK messages as defined in [1]
  and are triggered by packet loss.









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3.4.  Topologies

  Mainly, four different topologies are simulated to show the key
  features of the extended profile.  However, for some specific
  simulations we used different topologies.  This is then indicated in
  the description of the simulation results.  The main four topologies
  are named after the number of participating RTP agents, i.e., T-2,
  T-4, T-8, and T-16, where T-2 is a unicast scenario, T-4 contains
  four agents, etc.  Figure 1 below illustrates the main topologies.

                                                  A5
                                    A5            |   A6
                                   /              |  /
                                  /               | /--A7
                                 /                |/
                   A2          A2-----A6          A2--A8
                  /           /                  /        A9
                 /           /                  /        /
                /           /                  /        /---A10
  A1-----A2   A1-----A3   A1-----A3-----A7   A1------A3<
                \           \                  \        \---A11
                 \           \                  \        \
                  \           \                  \        A12
                   A4          A4-----A8          A4--A13
                                                  |\
                                                  | \--A14
                                                  |  \
                                                  |  A15
                                                 A16

      T-2         T-4            T-8               T-16

                     Figure 1: Simulated topologies

4.  RTCP Bit Rate Measurements

  The new timing rules allow more frequent RTCP feedback for small
  multicast groups.  In large groups, the algorithm behaves similarly
  to the normal RTCP timing rules.  While it is generally good to
  have more frequent feedback, it cannot be allowed at all to
  increase the bit rate used for RTCP above a fixed limit, i.e., 5%
  of the total RTP bandwidth according to RTP.  This section shows
  that the new timing rules keep RTCP bandwidth usage under the 5%
  limit for all investigated scenarios, topologies, and group sizes.
  Furthermore, we show that mixed groups (some members using
  AVP, some AVPF) can be allowed and that each session member behaves





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  fairly according to its corresponding specification.  Note that
  other values for the RTCP bandwidth limit may be specified using
  the RTCP bandwidth modifiers as in [10].

4.1.  Unicast

  First we measured the RTCP bandwidth share in the unicast topology
  T-2.  Even for a fixed topology and group size, there are several
  protocol parameters that are varied to simulate a large range of
  different scenarios.  We varied the configurations of the agents
  in the sense that the agents may use AVP or AVPF.  Thereby it
  is possible that one agent uses AVP and the other AVPF in one RTP
  session.  This is done to test the backwards compatibility of the
  AVPF profile.

  Next, we consider scenarios where no losses occur.  In this case,
  both RTP session members transmit the RTCP compound packets at
  regular intervals, calculated as T_rr, if they use AVPF, and
  use a minimum interval of 5 seconds (on average) if they implement
  AVP.  No early packets are sent, because the need to send early
  feedback is not given.  Still it is important to see that not more
  than 5% of the session bandwidth is used for RTCP and that AVP and
  AVPF members can coexist without interference.  The results can
  be found in Table 1.



























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      |         |      |      |      |      | Used RTCP Bit Rate |
      | Session | Send | Rec. | AVP  | AVPF | (% of session bw)  |
      |Bandwidth|Agents|Agents|Agents|Agents|  A1  |  A2  | sum  |
      +---------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.42 | 2.56 | 4.98 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.49 | 2.49 | 4.98 |
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.01 | 2.49 | 2.50 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.01 | 2.48 | 2.49 |
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.42 | 2.56 | 4.98 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.49 | 2.49 | 4.98 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.06 | 2.49 | 2.55 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.08 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.12 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.08 | 0.08 | 0.16 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.44 | 2.54 | 4.98 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.50 | 2.51 | 5.01 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.58 | 2.48 | 3.06 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.77 | 2.51 | 3.28 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.58 | 0.61 | 1.19 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.77 | 0.79 | 1.58 |

            Table 1: Unicast simulations without packet loss

  We can see that in configurations where both agents use the new
  timing rules each of them uses, at most, about 2.5% of the session
  bandwidth for RTP, which sums up to 5% of the session bandwidth for
  both.  This is achieved regardless of the agent being a sender or a
  receiver.  In the cases where agent A1 uses AVP and agent A2 AVPF,
  the total RTCP session bandwidth decreases.  This is because agent A1
  can send RTCP packets only with an average minimum interval of 5
  seconds.  Thus, only a small fraction of the session bandwidth is
  used for its RTCP packets.  For a high-bit-rate session (session
  bandwidth = 2 Mbps), the fraction of the RTCP packets from agent A1
  is as small as 0.01%.  For smaller session bandwidths, the fraction
  increases because the same amount of RTCP data is sent.  The
  bandwidth share that is used by RTCP packets from agent A2 is not
  different from what was used, when both agents implemented the AVPF.
  Thus, the interaction of AVP and AVPF agents is not problematic in
  these scenarios at all.

  In our second unicast experiment, we show that the allowed RTCP
  bandwidth share is not exceeded, even if packet loss occurs.  We
  simulated a constant byte error rate (BYER) on the link.  The byte
  errors are inserted randomly according to a uniform distribution.





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  Packets with byte errors are discarded on the link; hence the
  receiving agents will not see the loss immediately.  The agents
  detect packet loss by a gap in the sequence number.

  When an AVPF agent detects a packet loss, the early feedback
  procedure is started.  As described in AVPF [1], in unicast
  T_dither_max is always zero, hence an early packet can be sent
  immediately if allow_early is true.  If the last packet was already
  an early one (i.e., allow_early = false), the feedback might be
  appended to the next regularly scheduled receiver report.  The
  max_feedback_delay parameter (which we set to 1 second in our
  simulations) determines if that is allowed.

  The results are shown in Table 2, where we can see that there is no
  difference in the RTCP bandwidth share, whether or not losses occur.
  This is what we expected, because even though the RTCP packet size
  grows and early packets are sent, the interval between the packets
  increases and thus the RTCP bandwidth stays the same.  Only the RTCP
  bandwidth of the agents that use the AVP increases slightly.  This is
  because the interval between the packets is still 5 seconds (in
  average), but the packet size increased because of the feedback that
  is appended.

      |         |      |      |      |      | Used RTCP Bit Rate |
      | Session | Send | Rec. | AVP  | AVPF | (% of session bw)  |
      |Bandwidth|Agents|Agents|Agents|Agents|  A1  |  A2  | sum  |
      +---------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.42 | 2.56 | 4.98 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.49 | 2.49 | 4.98 |
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.01 | 2.49 | 2.50 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.01 | 2.48 | 2.49 |
      |  2 Mbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.03 |
      |  2 Mbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.42 | 2.56 | 4.98 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.50 | 2.49 | 4.99 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.06 | 2.50 | 2.56 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.08 | 2.49 | 2.57 |
      |200 kbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.13 |
      |200 kbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.09 | 0.08 | 0.17 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.42 | 2.57 | 4.99 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  -   | 1,2  | 2.52 | 2.51 | 5.03 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   |  1   |  2   | 0.58 | 2.54 | 3.12 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   |  1   |  2   | 0.83 | 2.43 | 3.26 |
      | 20 kbps |  1   |  2   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.58 | 0.73 | 1.31 |
      | 20 kbps | 1,2  |  -   | 1,2  |  -   | 0.86 | 0.84 | 1.70 |

              Table 2: Unicast simulations with packet loss




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4.2.  Multicast

  Next, we investigated the RTCP bandwidth share in multicast
  scenarios; i.e., we simulated the topologies T-4, T-8, and T-16 and
  measured the fraction of the session bandwidth that was used for RTCP
  packets.  Again we considered different situations and protocol
  configurations (e.g., with or without bit errors, groups with AVP
  and/or AVPF agents, etc.).  For reasons of readability, we present
  only selected results.  For a documentation of all results, see [5].

  The simulations of the different topologies in scenarios where no
  losses occur (neither through bit errors nor through congestion) show
  a similar behavior as in the unicast case.  For all group sizes, the
  maximum RTCP bit rate share used is 5.06% of the session bandwidth in
  a simulation of 16 session members in a low-bit-rate scenario
  (session bandwidth = 20 kbps) with several senders.  In all other
  scenarios without losses, the RTCP bit rate share used is below that.
  Thus, the requirement that not more than 5% of the session bit rate
  should be used for RTCP is fulfilled with reasonable accuracy.

  Simulations where bit errors are randomly inserted in RTP and RTCP
  packets and the corrupted packets are discarded give the same
  results.  The 5% rule is kept (at maximum 5.07% of the session
  bandwidth is used for RTCP).

  Finally, we conducted simulations where we reduced the link bandwidth
  and thereby caused congestion-related losses.  These simulations are
  different from the previous bit error simulations, in that the losses
  occur more in bursts and are more correlated, also between different
  agents.  The correlation and "burstiness" of the packet loss is due
  to the queuing discipline in the routers we simulated; we used simple
  FIFO queues with a drop-tail strategy to handle congestion.  Random
  Early Detection (RED) queues may enhance the performance, because the
  burstiness of the packet loss might be reduced; however, this is not
  the subject of our investigations, but is left for future study.  The
  delay between the agents, which also influences RTP and RTCP packets,
  is much more variable because of the added queuing delay.  Still the
  RTCP bit rate share used does not increase beyond 5.09% of the
  session bandwidth.  Thus, also for these special cases the
  requirement is fulfilled.

4.3.  Summary of the RTCP Bit Rate Measurements

  We have shown that for unicast and reasonable multicast scenarios,
  feedback implosion does not happen.  The requirement that at maximum
  5% of the session bandwidth is used for RTCP is fulfilled for all
  investigated scenarios.




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5.  Feedback Measurements

  In this section we describe the results of feedback delay
  measurements, which we conducted in the simulations.  Therefore, we
  use two metrics for measuring the performance of the algorithms;
  these are the "mean waiting time" (MWT) and the number of feedback
  packets that are sent, suppressed, or not allowed.  The waiting time
  is the time, measured at a certain agent, between the detection of a
  packet loss event and the time when the corresponding feedback is
  sent.  Assuming that the value of the feedback decreases with its
  delay, we think that the mean waiting time is a good metric to
  measure the performance gain we could get by using AVPF instead of
  AVP.

  The feedback an RTP/AVPF agent wants to send can be either sent or
  not sent.  If it was not sent, this could be due to feedback
  suppression (i.e., another receiver already sent the same feedback)
  or because the feedback was not allowed (i.e., the max_feedback_delay
  was exceeded).  We traced for every detected loss, if the agent sent
  the corresponding feedback or not and if not, why.  The more feedback
  was not allowed, the worse the performance of the algorithm.
  Together with the waiting times, this gives us a good hint of the
  overall performance of the scheme.

5.1.  Unicast

  In the unicast case, the maximum dithering interval T_dither_max is
  fixed and set to zero.  This is because it does not make sense for a
  unicast receiver to wait for other receivers if they have the same
  feedback to send.  But still feedback can be delayed or might not be
  permitted to be sent at all.  The regularly scheduled packets are
  spaced according to T_rr, which depends in the unicast case mainly on
  the session bandwidth.

  Table 3 shows the mean waiting times (MWTs) measured in seconds for
  some configurations of the unicast topology T-2.  The number of
  feedback packets that are sent or discarded is listed also (feedback
  sent (sent) or feedback discarded (disc)).  We do not list suppressed
  packets, because for the unicast case feedback suppression does not
  apply.  In the simulations, agent A1 was a sender and agent A2 was a
  pure receiver.










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      |         |       |          Feedback Statistics          |
      | Session |       |       AVP         |       AVPF        |
      |Bandwidth|  PLR  | sent |disc| MWT   | sent |disc| MWT   |
      +---------+-------+------+----+-------+------+----+-------+
      |  2 Mbps | 0.001 |  781 |  0 | 2.604 |  756 |  0 | 0.015 |
      |  2 Mbps | 0.01  | 7480 |  0 | 2.591 | 7548 |  2 | 0.006 |
      |  2 Mbps | cong. |   25 |  0 | 2.557 | 1741 |  0 | 0.001 |
      | 20 kbps | 0.001 |   79 |  0 | 2.472 |   74 |  2 | 0.034 |
      | 20 kbps | 0.01  |  780 |  0 | 2.605 |  709 | 64 | 0.163 |
      | 20 kbps | cong. |  780 |  0 | 2.590 |  687 | 70 | 0.162 |

        Table 3: Feedback statistics for the unicast simulations

  From the table above we see that the mean waiting time can be
  decreased dramatically by using AVPF instead of AVP.  While the
  waiting times for agents using AVP is always around 2.5 seconds (half
  the minimum interval average), it can be decreased to a few ms for
  most of the AVPF configurations.

  In the configurations with high session bandwidth, normally all
  triggered feedback is sent.  This is because more RTCP bandwidth is
  available.  There are only very few exceptions, which are probably
  due to more than one packet loss within one RTCP interval, where the
  first loss was by chance sent quite early.  In this case, it might be
  possible that the second feedback is triggered after the early packet
  was sent, but possibly too early to append it to the next regularly
  scheduled report, because of the limitation of the
  max_feedback_delay.  This is different for the cases with a small
  session bandwidth, where the RTCP bandwidth share is quite low and
  T_rr thus larger.  After an early packet was sent, the time to the
  next regularly scheduled packet can be very high.  We saw that in
  some cases the time was larger than the max_feedback_delay, and in
  these cases the feedback is not allowed to be sent at all.

  With a different setting of max_feedback_delay, it is possible to
  have either more feedback that is not allowed and a decreased mean
  waiting time or more feedback that is sent but an increased waiting
  time.  Thus, the parameter should be set with care according to the
  application's needs.

5.2.  Multicast

  In this section, we describe some measurements of feedback statistics
  in the multicast simulations.  We picked out certain characteristic
  and representative results.  We considered the topology T-16.
  Different scenarios and applications are simulated for this topology.
  The parameters of the different links are set as follows.  The agents
  A2, A3, and A4 are connected to the middle node of the multicast



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  tree, i.e., agent A1, via high bandwidth and low-delay links.  The
  other agents are connected to the nodes 2, 3, and 4 via different
  link characteristics.  The agents connected to node 2 represent
  mobile users.  They suffer in certain configurations from a certain
  byte error rate on their access links and the delays are high.  The
  agents that are connected to node 3 have low-bandwidth access links,
  but do not suffer from bit errors.  The last agents, which are
  connected to node 4, have high bandwidth and low delay.

5.2.1.  Shared Losses vs. Distributed Losses

  In our first investigation, we wanted to see the effect of the loss
  characteristic on the algorithm's performance.  We investigate the
  cases where packet loss occurs for several users simultaneously
  (shared losses) or totally independently (distributed losses).  We
  first define agent A1 to be the sender.  In the case of shared
  losses, we inserted a constant byte error rate on one of the middle
  links, i.e., the link between A1 and A2.  In the case of distributed
  losses, we inserted the same byte error rate on all links downstream
  of A2.

  These scenarios are especially interesting because of the feedback
  suppression algorithm.  When all receivers share the same loss, it is
  only necessary for one of them to send the loss report.  Hence if a
  member receives feedback with the same content that it has scheduled
  to be sent, it suppresses the scheduled feedback.  Of course, this
  suppressed feedback does not contribute to the mean waiting times.
  So we expect reduced waiting times for shared losses, because the
  probability is high that one of the receivers can send the feedback
  more or less immediately.  The results are shown in the following
  table.

      |     |                Feedback Statistics                |
      |     |  Shared Losses          |  Distributed Losses     |
      |Agent|sent|fbsp|disc|sum | MWT |sent|fbsp|disc|sum | MWT |
      +-----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+----+----+----+-----+
      |  A2 | 274| 351|  25| 650|0.267|   -|   -|   -|   -|    -|
      |  A5 | 231| 408|  11| 650|0.243| 619|   2|  32| 653|0.663|
      |  A6 | 234| 407|   9| 650|0.235| 587|   2|  32| 621|0.701|
      |  A7 | 223| 414|  13| 650|0.253| 594|   6|  41| 641|0.658|
      |  A8 | 188| 443|  19| 650|0.235| 596|   1|  32| 629|0.677|

         Table 4: Feedback statistics for multicast simulations

  Table 4 shows the feedback statistics for the simulation of a large
  group size.  All 16 agents of topology T-16 joined the RTP session.
  However, only agent A1 acts as an RTP sender; the other agents are
  pure receivers.  Only 4 or 5 agents suffer from packet loss, i.e.,



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  A2, A5, A6, A7, and A8 for the case of shared losses and A5, A6, A7,
  and A8 in the case of distributed losses.  Since the number of
  session members is the same for both cases, T_rr is also the same on
  the average.  Still the mean waiting times are reduced by more than
  50% in the case of shared losses.  This proves our assumption that
  shared losses enhance the performance of the algorithm, regardless of
  the loss characteristic.

  The feedback suppression mechanism seems to be working quite well.
  Even though some feedback is sent from different receivers (i.e.,
  1150 loss reports are sent in total and only 650 packets were lost,
  resulting in loss reports being received on the average 1.8 times),
  most of the redundant feedback was suppressed.  That is, 2023 loss
  reports were suppressed from 3250 individual detected losses, which
  means that more than 60% of the feedback was actually suppressed.

6.  Investigations on "l"

  In this section, we want to investigate the effect of the parameter
  "l" on the T_dither_max calculation in RTP/AVPF agents.  We
  investigate the feedback suppression performance as well as the
  report delay for three sample scenarios.

  For all receivers, the T_dither_max value is calculated as
  T_dither_max = l * T_rr, with l = 0.5.  The rationale for this is
  that, in general, if the receiver has no round-trip time (RTT)
  estimation, it does not know how long it should wait for other
  receivers to send feedback.  The feedback suppression algorithm would
  certainly fail if the time selected is too short.  However, the
  waiting time is increased unnecessarily (and thus the value of the
  feedback is decreased) in case the chosen value is too large.
  Ideally, the optimum time value could be found for each case, but
  this is not always feasible.  On the other hand, it is not dangerous
  if the optimum time is not used.  A decreased feedback value and a
  failure of the feedback suppression mechanism do not hurt the network
  stability.  We have shown for the cases of distributed losses that
  the overall bandwidth constraints are kept in any case and thus we
  could only lose some performance by choosing the wrong time value.
  On the other hand, a good measure for T_dither_max is the RTCP
  interval T_rr.  This value increases with the number of session
  members.  Also, we know that we can send feedback at least every
  T_rr.  Thus, increasing T_dither max beyond T_rr would certainly make
  no sense.  So by choosing T_rr/2, we guarantee that at least
  sometimes (i.e., when a loss is detected in the first half of the
  interval between two regularly scheduled RTCP packets) we are allowed
  to send early packets.  Because of the randomness of T_dither, we
  still have a good chance of sending the early packet in time.




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  The AVPF profile specifies that the calculation of T_dither_max, as
  given above, is common to session members having an RTT estimation
  and to those not having it.  If this were not so, participants using
  different calculations for T_dither_max might also have very
  different mean waiting times before sending feedback, which
  translates into different reporting priorities.  For example, in a
  scenario where T_rr = 1 s and the RTT = 100 ms, receivers using the
  RTT estimation would, on average, send more feedback than those not
  using it.  This might partially cancel out the feedback suppression
  mechanism and even cause feedback implosion.  Also note that, in a
  general case where the losses are shared, the feedback suppression
  mechanism works if the feedback packets from each receiver have
  enough time to reach each of the other ones before the calculated
  T_dither_max seconds.  Therefore, in scenarios of very high bandwidth
  (small T_rr), the calculated T_dither_max could be much smaller than
  the propagation delay between receivers, which would translate into a
  failure of the feedback suppression mechanism.  In these cases, one
  solution could be to limit the bandwidth available to receivers (see
  [10]) such that this does not happen.  Another solution could be to
  develop a mechanism for feedback suppression based on the RTT
  estimation between senders.  This will not be discussed here and may
  be the subject of another document.  Note, however, that a really
  high bandwidth media stream is not that likely to rely on this kind
  of error repair in the first place.

  In the following, we define three representative sample scenarios.
  We use the topology from the previous section, T-16.  Most of the
  agents contribute only little to the simulations, because we
  introduced an error rate only on the link between the sender A1 and
  the agent A2.

  The first scenario represents those cases, where losses are shared
  between two agents.  One agent is located upstream on the path
  between the other agent and the sender.  Therefore, agent A2 and
  agent A5 see the same losses that are introduced on the link between
  the sender and agent A2.  Agents A6, A7, and A8 do not join the RTP
  session.  From the other agents, only agents A3 and A9 join.  All
  agents are pure receivers, except A1, which is the sender.

  The second scenario also represents cases where losses are shared
  between two agents, but this time the agents are located on different
  branches of the multicast tree.  The delays to the sender are roughly
  of the same magnitude.  Agents A5 and A6 share the same losses.
  Agents A3 and A9 join the RTP session, but are pure receivers and do
  not see any losses.

  Finally, in the third scenario, the losses are shared between two
  agents, A5 and A6.  The same agents as in the second scenario are



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  active.  However, the delays of the links are different.  The delay
  of the link between agents A2 and A5 is reduced to 20 ms and between
  A2 and A6 to 40 ms.

  All agents beside agent A1 are pure RTP receivers.  Thus, these
  agents do not have an RTT estimation to the source.  T_dither_max is
  calculated with the above given formula, depending only on T_rr and
  l, which means that all agents should calculate roughly the same
  T_dither_max.

6.1.  Feedback Suppression Performance

  The feedback suppression rate for an agent is defined as the ratio of
  the total number of feedback packets not sent out of the total number
  of feedback packets the agent intended to send (i.e., the sum of sent
  and not sent).  The reasons for not sending a packet include: the
  receiver already saw the same loss reported in a receiver report
  coming from another session member or the max_feedback_delay
  (application-specific) was surpassed.

  The results for the feedback suppression rate of the agent Af that is
  further away from the sender are depicted in Table 5.  In general, it
  can be seen that the feedback suppression rate increases as l
  increases.  However there is a threshold, depending on the
  environment, from which the additional gain is not significant
  anymore.

                 |      |  Feedback Suppression Rate  |
                 |  l   | Scen. 1 | Scen. 2 | Scen. 3 |
                 +------+---------+---------+---------+
                 | 0.10 |  0.671  |  0.051  |  0.089  |
                 | 0.25 |  0.582  |  0.060  |  0.210  |
                 | 0.50 |  0.524  |  0.114  |  0.361  |
                 | 0.75 |  0.523  |  0.180  |  0.370  |
                 | 1.00 |  0.523  |  0.204  |  0.369  |
                 | 1.25 |  0.506  |  0.187  |  0.372  |
                 | 1.50 |  0.536  |  0.213  |  0.414  |
                 | 1.75 |  0.526  |  0.215  |  0.424  |
                 | 2.00 |  0.535  |  0.216  |  0.400  |
                 | 3.00 |  0.522  |  0.220  |  0.405  |
                 | 4.00 |  0.522  |  0.220  |  0.405  |

   Table 5: Fraction of feedback that was suppressed at agent (Af) of
     the total number of feedback messages the agent wanted to send

  Similar results can be seen in Table 6 for the agent An that is
  nearer to the sender.




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                 |      |  Feedback Suppression Rate  |
                 |  l   | Scen. 1 | Scen. 2 | Scen. 3 |
                 +------+---------+---------+---------+
                 | 0.10 |  0.056  |  0.056  |  0.090  |
                 | 0.25 |  0.063  |  0.055  |  0.166  |
                 | 0.50 |  0.116  |  0.099  |  0.255  |
                 | 0.75 |  0.141  |  0.141  |  0.312  |
                 | 1.00 |  0.179  |  0.175  |  0.352  |
                 | 1.25 |  0.206  |  0.176  |  0.361  |
                 | 1.50 |  0.193  |  0.193  |  0.337  |
                 | 1.75 |  0.197  |  0.204  |  0.341  |
                 | 2.00 |  0.207  |  0.207  |  0.368  |
                 | 3.00 |  0.196  |  0.203  |  0.359  |
                 | 4.00 |  0.196  |  0.203  |  0.359  |

   Table 6: Fraction of feedback that was suppressed at agent (An) of
     the total number of feedback messages the agent wanted to send

  The rate of feedback suppression failure is depicted in Table 7.  The
  trend of additional performance increase is not significant beyond a
  certain threshold.  Dependence on the scenario is noticeable here as
  well.

                 |      |Feedback Suppr. Failure Rate |
                 |  l   | Scen. 1 | Scen. 2 | Scen. 3 |
                 +------+---------+---------+---------+
                 | 0.10 |  0.273  |  0.893  |  0.822  |
                 | 0.25 |  0.355  |  0.885  |  0.624  |
                 | 0.50 |  0.364  |  0.787  |  0.385  |
                 | 0.75 |  0.334  |  0.679  |  0.318  |
                 | 1.00 |  0.298  |  0.621  |  0.279  |
                 | 1.25 |  0.289  |  0.637  |  0.267  |
                 | 1.50 |  0.274  |  0.595  |  0.249  |
                 | 1.75 |  0.274  |  0.580  |  0.235  |
                 | 2.00 |  0.258  |  0.577  |  0.233  |
                 | 3.00 |  0.282  |  0.577  |  0.236  |
                 | 4.00 |  0.282  |  0.577  |  0.236  |

          Table 7: The ratio of feedback suppression failures.

  Summarizing the feedback suppression results, it can be said that in
  general the feedback suppression performance increases as l
  increases.  However, beyond a certain threshold, depending on
  environment parameters such as propagation delays or session
  bandwidth, the additional increase is not significant anymore.  This
  threshold is not uniform across all scenarios; a value of l=0.5 seems
  to produce reasonable results with acceptable (though not optimal)
  overhead.



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6.2.  Loss Report Delay

  In this section, we show the results for the measured report delay
  during the simulations of the three sample scenarios.  This
  measurement is a metric of the performance of the algorithms, because
  the value of the feedback for the sender typically decreases with the
  delay of its reception.  The loss report delay is measured as the
  time at the sender between sending a packet and receiving the first
  corresponding loss report.

                 |      |   Mean Loss Report Delay    |
                 |  l   | Scen. 1 | Scen. 2 | Scen. 3 |
                 +------+---------+---------+---------+
                 | 0.10 |  0.124  |  0.282  |  0.210  |
                 | 0.25 |  0.168  |  0.266  |  0.234  |
                 | 0.50 |  0.243  |  0.264  |  0.284  |
                 | 0.75 |  0.285  |  0.286  |  0.325  |
                 | 1.00 |  0.329  |  0.305  |  0.350  |
                 | 1.25 |  0.351  |  0.329  |  0.370  |
                 | 1.50 |  0.361  |  0.363  |  0.388  |
                 | 1.75 |  0.360  |  0.387  |  0.392  |
                 | 2.00 |  0.367  |  0.412  |  0.400  |
                 | 3.00 |  0.368  |  0.507  |  0.398  |
                 | 4.00 |  0.368  |  0.568  |  0.398  |

      Table 8: The mean loss report delay, measured at the sender.

  As can be seen from Table 8, the delay increases, in general, as l
  increases.  Also, a similar effect as for the feedback suppression
  performance is present: beyond a certain threshold, the additional
  increase in delay is not significant anymore.  The threshold is
  environment dependent and seems to be related to the threshold, where
  the feedback suppression gain would not increase anymore.

6.3.  Summary of "l" Investigations

  We have shown experimentally that the performance of the feedback
  suppression mechanisms increases as l increases.  The same applies
  for the report delay, which also increases as l increases.  This
  leads to a threshold where both the performance and the delay do not
  increase any further.  The threshold is dependent upon the
  environment.

  So finding an optimum value of l is not possible because it is always
  a trade-off between delay and feedback suppression performance.  With
  l=0.5, we think that a trade-off was found that is acceptable for
  typical applications and environments.




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7.  Applications Using AVPF

  NEWPRED is one of the error resilience tools, which is defined in
  both ISO/IEC MPEG-4 visual part and ITU-T H.263.  NEWPRED achieves
  fast error recovery using feedback messages.  We simulated the
  behavior of NEWPRED in the network simulator environment as described
  above and measured the waiting time statistics, in order to verify
  that the extended RTP profile for RTCP-based feedback (AVPF) [1] is
  appropriate for the NEWPRED feedback messages.  Simulation results,
  which are presented in the following sections, show that the waiting
  time is small enough to get the expected performance of NEWPRED.

7.1.  NEWPRED Implementation in NS2

  The agent that performs the NEWPRED functionality, called NEWPRED
  agent, is different from the RTP agent we described above.  Some of
  the added features and functionalities are described in the following
  points:

  Application Feedback
     The "Application Layer Feedback Messages" format is used to
     transmit the NEWPRED feedback messages.  Thereby the NEWPRED
     functionality is added to the RTP agent.  The NEWPRED agent
     creates one NACK message for each lost segment of a video frame,
     and then assembles multiple NACK messages corresponding to the
     segments in the same video frame into one Application Layer
     Feedback Message.  Although there are two modes, namely, NACK mode
     and ACK mode, in NEWPRED [6][7], only NACK mode is used in these
     simulations.  In this simulation, the RTP layer doesn't generate
     feedback messages.  Instead, the decoder (NEWPRED) generates a
     NACK message when the segment cannot be decoded because the data
     hasn't arrived or loss of reference picture has occurred.  Those
     conditions are detected in the decoder with frame number, segment
     number, and existence of reference pictures in the decoder.

  The parameters of NEWPRED agent are as follows:

       f: Frame Rate(frames/sec)
     seg: Number of segments in one video frame
      bw: RTP session bandwidth(kbps)

  Generation of NEWPRED's NACK Messages
     The NEWPRED agent generates NACK messages when segments are lost.








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     a. The NEWPRED agent generates multiple NACK messages per one
        video frame when multiple segments are lost.  These are
        assembled into one Feedback Control Information (FCI) message
        per video frame.  If there is no lost segment, no message is
        generated and sent.

     b. The length of one NACK message is 4 bytes.  Let num be the
        number of NACK messages in one video frame (1 <= num <= seg).
        Thus, 12+4*num bytes is the size of the low-delay RTCP feedback
        message in a compound RTCP packet.

  Measurements
     We defined two values to be measured:

     - Recovery time
       The recovery time is measured as the time between the detection
       of a lost segment and reception of a recovered segment.  We
       measured this "recovery time" for each lost segment.

     - Waiting time
       The waiting time is the additional delay due to the feedback
       limitation of RTP.

  Figure 2 depicts the behavior of a NEWPRED agent when a loss occurs.

  The recovery time is approximated as follows:

     (Recovery time) = (Waiting time) +
                       (Transmission time for feedback message) +
                       (Transmission time for media data)

  Therefore, the waiting time is derived as follows:

     (Waiting time) = (Recovery time) - (Round-trip delay), where

     (Round-trip delay ) = (Transmission time for feedback message) +
                           (Transmission time for media data)














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       Picture Reference                            |: Picture Segment
                ____________________                %: Lost Segment
               /_    _    _    _    \
              v/ \  / \  / \  / \    \
              v   \v   \v   \v   \    \
  Sender   ---|----|----|----|----|----|---|------------->
                   \    \                 ^ \
                    \    \               /   \
                     \    \             /     \
                      \    v           /       \
                       \    x         /         \
                        \   Lost     /           \
                         \    x     /             \
  _____
                          v    x   / NACK          v
  Receiver ---------------|----%===-%----%----%----|----->
                               |-a-|               |
                               |-------  b  -------|

                         a: Waiting time
                         b: Recover time (%: Video segments are lost)

  Figure 2: Relation between the measured values at the NEWPRED agent

7.2.  Simulation

  We conducted two simulations (Simulation A and Simulation B).  In
  Simulation A, the packets are dropped with a fixed packet loss rate
  on a link between two NEWPRED agents.  In Simulation B, packet loss
  occurs due to congestion from other traffic sources, i.e., ftp
  sessions.

7.2.1.  Simulation A - Constant Packet Loss Rate

  The network topology used for this simulation is shown in Figure 3.

                 Link 1         Link 2        Link 3
       +--------+      +------+       +------+      +--------+
       | Sender |------|Router|-------|Router|------|Receiver|
       +--------+      +------+       +------+      +--------+
                10(msec)       x(msec)       10(msec)

        Figure 3: Network topology that is used for Simulation A

  Link1 and link3 are error free, and each link delay is 10 msec.
  Packets may get dropped on link2.  The packet loss rates (Plr) and
  link delay (D) are as follows:




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     D [ms] = {10, 50, 100, 200, 500}
     Plr    = {0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2}

  Session bandwidth, frame rate, and the number of segments are shown
  in Table 9.

              +------------+----------+-------------+-----+
              |Parameter ID| bw(kbps) |f (frame/sec)| seg |
              +------------+----------+-------------+-----+
              | 32k-4-3    |     32   |      4      |  3  |
              | 32k-5-3    |     32   |      5      |  3  |
              | 64k-5-3    |     64   |      5      |  3  |
              | 64k-10-3   |     64   |     10      |  3  |
              | 128k-10-6  |    128   |     10      |  6  |
              | 128k-15-6  |    128   |     15      |  6  |
              | 384k-15-6  |    384   |     15      |  6  |
              | 384k-30-6  |    384   |     30      |  6  |
              | 512k-30-6  |    512   |     30      |  6  |
              | 1000k-30-9 |   1000   |     30      |  9  |
              | 2000k-30-9 |   2000   |     30      |  9  |
              +------------+----------+-------------+-----+

             Table 9: Parameter sets of the NEWPRED agents

  Figure 4 shows the key values of the result (packet loss rate vs.
  mean of waiting time).

  When the packet loss rate is 5% and the session bandwidth is 32 kbps,
  the waiting time is around 400 msec, which is just allowable for
  reasonable NEWPRED performance.

  When the packet loss rate is less than 1%, the waiting time is less
  than 200 msec.  In such a case, the NEWPRED allows as much as
  200-msec additional link delay.

  When the packet loss rate is less than 5% and the session bandwidth
  is 64 kbps, the waiting time is also less than 200 msec.

  In 128-kbps cases, the result shows that when the packet loss rate is
  20%, the waiting time is around 200 msec.  In cases with more than
  512-kbps session bandwidth, there is no significant delay.  This
  means that the waiting time due to the feedback limitation of RTCP is
  negligible for the NEWPRED performance.








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     +------------------------------------------------------------+
     |           | Packet Loss Rate =                             |
     | Bandwidth | 0.005| 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.05 |0.10  |0.20  |
     |-----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------|
     |       32k |130-  |200-  |230-  |280-  |350-  |470-  |560-  |
     |           |   180|   250|   320|   390|   430|   610|   780|
     |       64k | 80-  |100-  |120-  |150-  |180-  |210-  |290-  |
     |           |   130|   150|   180|   190|   210|   300|   400|
     |      128k | 60-  | 70-  | 90-  |110-  |130-  |170-  |190-  |
     |           |    70|    80|   100|   120|   140|   190|   240|
     |      384k | 30-  | 30-  | 30-  | 40-  | 50-  | 50-  | 50-  |
     |           |    50|    50|    50|    50|    60|    70|    90|
     |      512k | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 60 |
     |           |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
     |     1000k | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 50 | < 55 |
     |           |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
     |     2000k | < 30 | < 30 | < 30 | < 30 | < 30 | < 35 | < 35 |
     +------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+

                  Figure 4: The result of simulation A

7.2.2.  Simulation B - Packet Loss Due to Congestion

  The configurations of link1, link2, and link3 are the same as in
  Simulation A except that link2 is also error-free, regarding bit
  errors.  However, in addition, some FTP agents are deployed to
  overload link2.  See Figure 5 for the simulation topology.

                  Link1         Link2          Link3
       +--------+      +------+       +------+      +--------+
       | Sender |------|Router|-------|Router|------|Receiver|
       +--------+    /|+------+       +------+|\    +--------+
               +---+/ |                       | \+---+
             +-|FTP|+---+                   +---+|FTP|-+
             | +---+|FTP| ...               |FTP|+---+ | ...
             +---+  +---+                   +---+  +---+

              FTP Agents                      FTP Agents

               Figure 5: Network Topology of Simulation B

  The parameters are defined as for Simulation A with the following
  values assigned:

     D[ms] ={10, 50, 100, 200, 500} 32 FTP agents are deployed at each
     edge, for a total of 64 FTP agents active.





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  The sets of session bandwidth, frame rate, and the number of segments
  are the same as in Simulation A (Table 9).

  We provide the results for the cases with 64 FTP agents, because
  these are the cases where packet losses could be detected to be
  stable.  The results are similar to those for Simulation A except for
  a constant additional offset of 50..100 ms.  This is due to the delay
  incurred by the routers' buffers.

7.3.  Summary of Application Simulations

  We have shown that the limitations of RTP AVPF profile do not
  generate such high delay in the feedback messages that the
  performance of NEWPRED is degraded for sessions from 32 kbps to 2
  Mbps.  We could see that the waiting time increases with a decreasing
  session bandwidth and/or an increasing packet loss rate.  The cause
  of the packet loss is not significant; congestion and constant packet
  loss rates behave similarly.  Still we see that for reasonable
  conditions and parameters the AVPF is well suited to support the
  feedback needed for NEWPRED.  For more information about NEWPRED, see
  [8] and [9].

8.  Summary

  The new RTP profile AVPF was investigated regarding performance and
  potential risks to the network stability.  Simulations were conducted
  using the network simulator ns2, simulating unicast and several
  differently sized multicast topologies.  The results were shown in
  this document.

  Regarding the network stability, it was important to show that the
  new profile does not lead to any feedback implosion or use more
  bandwidth than it is allowed.  We measured the bandwidth that was
  used for RTCP in relation to the RTP session bandwidth.  We have
  shown that, more or less exactly, 5% of the session bandwidth is used
  for RTCP, in all considered scenarios.  Other RTCP bandwidth values
  could be set using the RTCP bandwidth modifiers [10].  The scenarios
  included unicast with and without errors, differently sized multicast
  groups, with and without errors or congestion on the links.  Thus, we
  can say that the new profile behaves in a network-friendly manner in
  the sense that it uses only the allowed RTCP bandwidth, as defined by
  RTP.

  Secondly, we have shown that receivers using the new profile
  experience a performance gain.  This was measured by capturing the
  delay that the sender sees for the received feedback.  Using the new
  profile, this delay can be decreased by orders of magnitude.




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  In the third place, we investigated the effect of the parameter "l"
  on the new algorithms.  We have shown that there does not exist an
  optimum value for it but only a trade-off can be achieved.  The
  influence of this parameter is highly environment-specific and a
  trade-off between performance of the feedback suppression algorithm
  and the experienced delay has to be met.  The recommended value of
  l=0.5 given in this document seems to be reasonable for most
  applications and environments.

9.  Security Considerations

  This document describes the simulation work carried out to verify the
  correct working of the RTCP timing rules specified in the AVPF
  profile [1].  Consequently, security considerations concerning these
  timing rules are described in that document.




































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10.  Normative References

  [1]  Ott, J., Wenger, S., Sato, N., Burmeister, C., and J. Rey,
       "Extended RTP Profile for Real-time Transport Control Protocol
       (RTCP)-Based Feedback (RTP/AVPF)", RFC 4585, July 2006.

11.  Informative References

  [2]  Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V. Jacobson,
       "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications", STD 64,
       RFC 3550, July 2003.

  [3]  Schulzrinne, H. and S. Casner, "RTP Profile for Audio and Video
       Conferences with Minimal Control", STD 65, RFC 3551, July 2003.

  [4]  Network Simulator Version 2 - ns-2, available from
       http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns.

  [5]  C. Burmeister, T. Klinner, "Low Delay Feedback RTCP - Timing
       Rules Simulation Results".  Technical Report of the Panasonic
       European Laboratories, September 2001, available from:
       http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~jo/misc/
       SimulationResults-A.pdf.

  [6]  ISO/IEC 14496-2:1999/Amd.1:2000, "Information technology -
       Coding of audio-visual objects - Part2: Visual", July 2000.

  [7]  ITU-T Recommendation, H.263.  Video encoding for low bitrate
       communication.  1998.

  [8]  S. Fukunaga, T. Nakai, and H. Inoue, "Error Resilient Video
       Coding by Dynamic Replacing of Reference Pictures", IEEE Global
       Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM), pp.1503-1508, 1996.

  [9]  H. Kimata, Y. Tomita, H. Yamaguchi, S. Ichinose, T. Ichikawa,
       "Receiver-Oriented Real-Time Error Resilient Video Communication
       System: Adaptive Recovery from Error Propagation in Accordance
       with Memory Size at Receiver", Electronics and Communications in
       Japan, Part 1, vol. 84, no. 2, pp.8-17, 2001.

  [10] Casner, S., "Session Description Protocol (SDP) Bandwidth
       Modifiers for RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) Bandwidth", RFC 3556,
       July 2003.








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Authors' Addresses

  Carsten Burmeister
  Panasonic R&D Center Germany GmbH
  Monzastr. 4c
  D-63225 Langen, Germany

  EMail: [email protected]


  Rolf Hakenberg
  Panasonic R&D Center Germany GmbH
  Monzastr. 4c
  D-63225 Langen, Germany

  EMail: [email protected]


  Akihiro Miyazaki
  Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd
  1006, Kadoma, Kadoma City, Osaka, Japan

  EMail: [email protected]


  Joerg Ott
  Helsinki University of Technology, Networking Laboratory
  PO Box 3000, 02015 TKK, Finland

  EMail: [email protected]


  Noriyuki Sato
  Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
  1-16-8 Chuo, Warabi, Saitama 335-8510 Japan

  EMail: [email protected]


  Shigeru Fukunaga
  Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
  2-5-7 Hommachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka 541-0053 Japan

  EMail: [email protected]







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Full Copyright Statement

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