Effect of the FDT transmission frequency for an optimum content delivery using the FLUTE protocol

File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport (FLUTE) is the standard protocol used in unidirectional environments to provide reliability in the transmission of multimedia files. The key element of this protocol is the use of the File Delivery Table (FDT), which is the in-band mechanism used by FLUTE to inform clients about the files (and their characteristics) transmitted within a FLUTE session. Clients need to receive the FDT in order to start downloading files. Thus, the delivery of FDT packets and the proper configuration of their parameters have a great impact on the Quality of Experience perceived by the users of FLUTE content download services. This paper presents a complete analysis about how the FDT transmission frequency affects the download time of files. Moreover, results show which are the optimum values that minimize this download time. An appropriate configuration of the FDT transmission frequency as well as the use of AL-FEC mechanisms provides an optimum content delivery using the FLUTE protocol.