Modeling network protocol overhead for video

With the gaining popularity of video communication over the Internet, it is important for networking protocol researchers to have tools to analyze and simulate video. We present the results of an extensive study to understand which applications and protocols are used for video communication over the Internet. We obtained an extensive list of sources of video content around the Internet (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube) and used Wireshark to capture packets containing video from these various video sources. We found Adobe Flash to be, by far, the most common application used to deliver video over the Internet. Adobe Flash uses its own proprietary application layer protocol called RTMP. We used the results of this study to develop analytical models for the network protocol overhead added to video that is communicated over the Internet. In addition, we have developed simulation tools that we are making available to the research community.