Monitoring of Video Streaming Quality from Encrypted Network Traffic: The Case of YouTube Streaming
2016 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The video streaming applications contribute to a major share of the Internet traffic. Consequently, monitoring and management of video streaming quality has gained a significant importance in the recent years. The disturbances in the video, such as, amount of buffering and bitrate adaptations affect user Quality of Experience (QoE). Network operators usually monitor such events from network traffic with the help of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). However, it is becoming difficult to monitor such events due to the traffic encryption. To address this challenge, this thesis work makes two key contributions. First, it presents a test-bed, which performs automated video streaming tests under controlled time-varying network conditions and measures performance at network and application level. Second, it develops and evaluates machine learning models for the detection of video buffering and bitrate adaptation events, which rely on the information extracted from packets headers. The findings of this work suggest that buffering and bitrate adaptation events within 60 second intervals can be detected using Random Forest model with an accuracy of about 70%. Moreover, the results show that the features based on time-varying patterns of downlink throughput and packet inter-arrival times play a distinctive role in the detection of such events.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2016. , p. 64
Keywords [en]
Quality of Experience, Machine Learning, Encrypted video traffic classification, Video Streaming Quality
National Category
Telecommunications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-13336OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-13336DiVA, id: diva2:1044774
External cooperation
Ericsson
Subject / course
ET2580 Master's Thesis (120 credits) in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on Telecommunication Systems
Educational program
ETATE Master of Science Programme in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on Telecommunication Systems
Supervisors
Examiners
2016-11-152016-11-062016-11-15Bibliographically approved