Network service selection for distributed multimedia applications

Abstract

An important question in the development of system support for distributed multimedia is the type of network service offered to applications. This paper compares two network service disciplines: weighted fair queueing (WFQ) and non-preemptive earliest deadline first (NEDF). We show that, for a broad class of high-bandwidth distributed multimedia applications, WFQ outperforms NEDF in terms of network throughput while still providing an application-adequate end-to-end service. This result holds despite the fact that NEDF offers applications far greater flexibility in terms of control over end-to-end delivery delay.