Watching Stars in Pixels: The Interplay of Traffic Shaping and YouTube Streaming QoE over GEO Satellite Networks
Jiamo Liu, David Lerner, Jae Chung, Udit Paul, Arpit Gupta, Elizabeth, Belding

TL;DR
This study investigates how traffic shaping and TCP proxy deployment in GEO satellite networks impact YouTube streaming quality, revealing significant rebuffering and resolution issues despite low expected bit rates.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed analysis of YouTube QoE over GEO satellite networks considering traffic shaping, proxies, and protocols, highlighting factors affecting streaming performance.
Findings
28% of TCP sessions experience rebuffering
gQUIC uses only 63% of network capacity
Median resolution drops to 380p for TCP and 299p for gQUIC
Abstract
Geosynchronous satellite (GEO) networks are a crucial option for users beyond terrestrial connectivity. However, unlike terrestrial networks, GEO networks exhibit high latency and deploy TCP proxies and traffic shapers. The deployment of proxies effectively mitigates the impact of high network latency in GEO networks, while traffic shapers help realize customer-controlled data-saver options that optimize data usage. It is unclear how the interplay between GEO networks' high latency, TCP proxies, and traffic-shaping policies affects the quality of experience (QoE) for commonly used video applications. To fill this gap, we analyze the quality of over k YouTube video sessions streamed across a production GEO network with a Kbps shaping rate. Given the average bit rates for the selected videos, we expected seamless streaming at p or lower resolutions. However, our analysis…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSatellite Communication Systems · Network Traffic and Congestion Control · Age of Information Optimization
