A Methodology for Performance Analysis of Real-Time Continuous Media Applications

Present day continuous media applications have real-time requirements which must be satisfied by the transport service of the network infrastructure used, and the degree to which these requirements are met have a direct impact on performance, perhaps rendering the application inoperative. Therefore it is desirable to perform performance monitoring, through such performance parameters as delay, jitter, packet loss and throughput. Additionally, the awareness of the current values of these performance parameters may be of importance, in that a continuous media application may be able to tolerate the less than perfect satisfaction of its initial real-time requirements, and adapt itself to network conditions within certain limits. This paper describes a simple methodology for measuring these performance parameters using information generated by the RTCP protocol. The use of this methodology is illustrated by results from point-to-point desktop videoconferencing sessions.