A Server-based Flow Allocation Scheme for Streaming Services in Data Center Networks

Streaming services provided by data centers (DCs) have become increasingly popular. The quality of streaming services greatly depends on network conditions, though, such as available bandwidth and delay time characteristics. To realize high quality stream- ing services, selecting an appropriate access network among available ones is necessary. However, in wireless LANs, a station (STA) simply selects an access point (AP) with the maximum received signal strength to connect to the Internet. Therefore, the service quality will deteriorate when access from STAs is concentrated in a specific AP. In this paper, we propose a server-based flow allocation scheme based on collectable information in DC networks to enable high quality streaming services. This scheme collects information, including the packet loss rate of existing flows as well as the available bandwidth of access networks, and then allocates a streaming flow to an appropriate access network based on the collected information. We show the effectiveness of this approach through simulation evaluations.