Optimal Layered Multicast With Source Rate Adaption in Two-Level Hierarchical Overlay Networks

Layered overlay multicast has emerged as an important solution for video streaming over heterogeneous network. In this paper, the authors formulate it into a joint network flow control and performance optimization problem where adaptive layer rates are determined through a greedy algorithm close to optimal. The overlay network is constrained by a practical two-level hierarchical overlay model where the bandwidth sharing is imposed on underlying edge-bottleneck links. To maintain less computational complexity and avoidance of global information, the M-layer maximization problem is transformed into multiple one-layer minimization sub-problems.