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

2026-01-26

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of network congestion in high-concurrency video streaming, where existing client-driven adaptation mechanisms suffer from delayed responses and server-coordinated approaches are hindered by limited scalability and single points of failure. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose a multi-destination cooperative transmission framework grounded in Information-Centric Networking (ICN). The framework introduces a novel scoped interest protocol and a distributed in-network decision-making mechanism, enabling receiver-group bitrate alignment and redundant transmission reduction without centralized control. By integrating lightweight distributed optimization, request aggregation, and hop-by-hop quality adaptation, the proposed method significantly outperforms DASH, MoQ, and ICN baselines in simulations—particularly under high-concurrency conditions—demonstrating substantial improvements in bandwidth utilization, fairness, and user-perceived quality of experience.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web

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.

Problem

• video streaming
• scalability
• congestion control
• multi-destination delivery
• quality adaptation

Innovation

• in-network rate adaptation
• coordinated video transmission
• information-centric networking
• distributed optimization
• range-interest protocol