COMETS: Coordinated Multi-Destination Video Transmission with In-Network Rate Adaptation

TL;DR

COMETS is a scalable, fair, and adaptive video transmission framework leveraging in-network information-centric principles to improve quality and efficiency during large-scale streaming events.

Contribution

COMETS introduces a novel in-network coordination protocol and distributed optimization for multi-destination video streaming, enhancing scalability and fairness.

Findings

Improves bandwidth utilization over existing methods.

Enhances fairness and user quality of experience.

Performs well under high concurrency conditions.

Abstract

Large-scale video streaming events attract millions of simultaneous viewers, stressing existing delivery infrastructures. Client-driven adaptation reacts slowly to shared congestion, while server-based coordination introduces scalability bottlenecks and single points of failure. We present COMETS, a coordinated multi-destination video transmission framework that leverages information-centric networking principles such as request aggregation and in-network state awareness to enable scalable, fair, and adaptive rate control. COMETS introduces a novel range-interest protocol and distributed in-network decision process that aligns video quality across receiver groups while minimizing redundant transmissions. To achieve this, we develop a lightweight distributed optimization framework that guides per-hop quality adaptation without centralized control. Extensive emulation shows that COMETS consistently improves bandwidth utilization, fairness, and user-perceived quality of experience over DASH, MoQ, and ICN baselines, particularly under high concurrency. The results highlight COMETS as a practical, deployable approach for next-generation scalable video delivery.