Transporting HDTV Data over IP

Abstract

Technological developments in wide area networking are greatly increasing the availability of broadcast quality of digital video transmissions. The existence of digital video and the broad availability of wide area networks has pushed the telecommunications, entertainment and business sectors to find solutions for transmitting digital video over existing networks. It is becoming quite apparent that Internet Protocol (IP) will become the dominant networking protocol for the decade. Although IP was primarily relegated to the Internet, the explosion of services and capabilities of the Internet have forced significant changes in the entire telecommunications industry. Results reported in recent literatures have shown the possibility of transporting QCIF/SIF/ITU-R 601 videos [1,3] over the Internet. This paper examines the possibilities of transmitting higher bandwidth, high definition TV data, across the Internet. Our simulations on NS-2 basing on the RTP/IP protocols suggest that a 23 Mbps bandwidth IS needed between nodes for the streaming of 18 Mbps compressed HDTV video. The paper brings some results and suggestions to the networking industry.