A Network Analysis on Cloud Gaming: Stadia, GeForce Now and PSNow

Virtual reality (VR) based games are a type of game that provides immersive gaming experience, allowing players to dive into the virtual world of the game being played. VR-based games require a high minimum computer specification, so thin clients cannot play VR-based games properly. This research aims to see how to enable thin computers to play VR-based games by utilizing cloud gaming technology. Using a high specification computer as a server, an android device as a VR headset, this Final Project implements a VR headset device so that it can be used in conjunction with cloud gaming services to be able to play VR-based games on thin computers and see how well the implementation by seeing the result from computer resources used and the Quality of Services. With Parsec cloud gaming services, the application carried out in this Final Project can run well on computers with low specifications. CPU usage on the client computer when the service is running is high at 91% usage, with 2818 MB RAM usage. Quality of Service is obtained when setting the highest quality preset, with a throughput of 16MB with a delay of about 2 ms. VR games that are played can run well with a minimum bandwidth of 15 Mbps selected from the Frame per Second (FPS) results obtained to reach 56 FPS with medium quality settings.

Internet video streaming is a hot topic in multimedia systems. A large variety of devices (computers, mobile phones, TVs, etc.) are connected to the Internet via wired or wireless networks and are capable of receiving and decoding HD video content. To enable new services like HD video streaming (e.g., online video rental), the Internet’s infrastructure was enhanced. But the Internet is still a best-effort network, which does not implement quality-of-service or admission control, resulting in time-varying bandwidth and packet delay, packet loss and network congestion. Because video streaming accounts for a considerable amount of the Internet’s traffic, video streaming needs additionally to be congestion-aware, to avoid a congestion collapse of the Internet. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) can adapt to changing network conditions and is currently the de facto standard protocol for congestion-aware and reliable data transmission in the Internet. This fact gave TCP-based video streaming a huge momentum. Consequently, this thesis investigates TCP-based adaptive video streaming for the Internet. The main goal is to provide a solution for congestion-aware video streaming, while still being able to achieve a reasonable performance in error-prone networks. To complement existing work on congestion-aware adaptive streaming, this thesis makes six contributions. (1) The baseline performance of TCP-based adaptive streaming is identified by means of an evaluation of different adaptive streaming approaches. The results represent a reference for further investigations. (2) An investigation on the influence of TCP’s behavior in presence of packet loss on the video streaming performance. (3) To overcome the shortcomings of TCP-based video streaming (single TCP connections fail to deliver a good performance in case of packet loss), a new approach to video streaming based on multiple request-response streams was introduced. The novelty of this system is that it is able to make use of multiple HTTP-based request-response streams while still providing TCP-friendliness. (4) A performance model of the HTTP-based request-response streams was developed, to estimate the influence of the system parameters and the network characteristics on the throughput performance. (5) A comprehensive evaluation of the HTTP-based request-response streams under diverse network conditions was conducted, to validate the model’s estimations. Additionally, the TCP-friendliness was evaluated, showing that request-response streaming systems can be configured to achieve TCP-friendliness. (6) A cellular network with high bandwidth fluctuations and RTTs was used to investigate the performance of the request-response streaming system in a mobile video streaming scenario. The results indicate that the streaming system can make good use of the available bandwidth, while the number of quality switches is kept low. While aggregating multiple TCP connections to improve the TCP streaming performance is quite common, usually the improvement comes at the cost of high deployment effort. By placing the streaming logic at the client, request-response streams can avoid this complexity. Additionally, this client-driven approach responds faster to changing network conditions and enables easy recovery from connection stalls or aborts, because the control loop is at the client. To improve the network efficiency and the scalability in terms of number of clients served, HTTP-based request-response streams can utilize HTTP proxies and caches.

Real-time HTTP streaming has gained global popularity for delivering video content over Internet. In particular, the recent MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) standard enables on-demand, live, and adaptive Internet streaming in response to network bandwidth fluctuations. Meanwhile, emerging is the new-generation video coding standard, H.265/HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) promises to reduce the bandwidth requirement by 50% at the same video quality when compared with the current H.264/AVC standard. However, little existing work has addressed the integration of the DASH and HEVC standards, let alone empirical performance evaluation of such systems. This paper presents an experimental HEVC-DASH system, which is a pull-based adaptive streaming solution that delivers HEVC-coded video content through conventional HTTP servers where the client switches to its desired quality, resolution or bitrate based on the available network bandwidth. Previous studies in DASH have focused on H.264/AVC, whereas we present an empirical evaluation of the HEVC-DASH system by implementing a real-world test bed, which consists of an Apache HTTP Server with GPAC, an MP4Client (GPAC) with open HEVC-based DASH client and a NETEM box in the middle emulating different network conditions. We investigate and analyze the performance of HEVC-DASH by exploring the impact of various network conditions such as packet loss, bandwidth and delay on video quality. Furthermore, we compare the Intra and Random Access profiles of HEVC coding with the Intra profile of H.264/AVC when the correspondingly encoded video is streamed with DASH. Finally, we explore the correlation among the quality metrics and network conditions, and empirically establish under which conditions the different codecs can provide satisfactory performance.

NB-IoT technology supports three scenarios for the use of the radio frequency spectrum: autonomous, in the guard band, shared spectrum use in mobile networks. The choice of NB-IoT deployment scenario is important. It affects not only the flexibility of network deployment, the cost of its modernization, but also the main indicators of the efficiency of the 4G mobile communication networks, and, consequently, the satisfaction of users with the Internet of Things services provided. The results of simulation modeling of the effectiveness of the use of three scenarios of using the radio frequency spectrum in 4G mobile networks in the provision of Internet of things services based on the application of a multi-criteria approach are presented in this article. The NB-IoT technology testing methodology, as well as the main conclusions and recommendations for choosing the most profitable NB-IoT deployment scenario are presented for consideration. Key words: NB-IoT, Internet of Things, in-band, standalone, guard band.

Cloud gaming is a relatively new paradigm in which the game is rendered in the cloud and is streamed to an end-user device through a thin client. Latency is a key challenge for cloud gaming. In order to optimize the end-to-end latency, it is first necessary to understand how the end-to-end latency builds up from the mobile device to the cloud gaming server. In this paper we dissect the delays occurring in the mobile device and measure access delays in various networks and network conditions. We also perform a Europe-wide latency measurement study to find the optimal server locations and see how the number of server locations affects the network delay. The results are compared to limits found for perceivable delays in recent human-computer interaction studies. We show that the limits can be achieved only with the latest mobile devices with specific control methods. In addition, we study the expected latency reduction by near future technological development and show that its potential impact is bigger on the end-to-end latency than that of replication of the service and server placement optimization.

Cloud gaming has been a prospective paradigm through which users can realistically play high-end games on its low-end devices by outsourcing both computation and rendering jobs to remote cloud computers. The paper contains a thorough survey of cloud gaming systems, including its architecture, technology that allows the system, and performance issues. The paper describes the general architecture of cloud games, such as non-transparent and transparent ones, and outlines the major Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics, such as latency, bitrate, energy usage, and delay sensitivity of the users. Moreover, different optimization schemes embraced in the cloud gaming systems are discussed, such as distributed architecture, resources distribution schemes, sharing of GPUs, compression data schemes, adaptive transmission and edge computing contribution to latency minimization. The paper also evaluates available commercial cloud gaming services and business models to identify current trends in the market and challenges in deploying the services. According to the literature review, the paper highlights that efficient control of latency, efficient management of resources, and edge-assisted architectures are essential in enhancing scalability and user experience. Lastly, the paper provides the possible direction and technological solutions required to make cloud gaming a mass adoption technology.

The emerging Cloud Gaming Service provides a highly accessible video gaming experience. With Cloud Gaming, potential players without enough local resource can access high-quality gaming using low-spec devices. With advancing technology, we consider that if the processing power at low-spec devices can be well harvested, the quality delivered on Cloud Gaming can be further improved. Therefore, we propose a Hybrid-Streaming System that aimed at improving the graphic quality delivered by Cloud Gaming. By utilizing the available rendering power from both the Cloud Server and client PC, the system distributes rendering operations to both sides to achieve the desired improvement. Quantitative results show the proposed method improves graphics quality, as well as reducing the server’s workload while attaining acceptable network bandwidth consumption levels.

Examines the future for cloud gaming services. These services have leveraged real-time video streaming technologies that have a long history of development. Cloud gaming refers to the technologies that offload parts of game software from traditional game consoles or personal computers (PCs) to powerful and elastic cloud infrastructures. Cloud gaming makes perfect sense to: 1) gamers, who otherwise have to constantly upgrade their consoles or PCs, which is certainly no fun and costly; 2) cloud service providers, who can sell the already-deployed and idling cloud resources to support the cutting-edge games that are extremely resource hungry; and 3) game developers, who no longer need to spend months to port their games to different platforms. As such, cloud gaming has attracted significant attention from both academia and industry.

Handoff mechanisms are very important in fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks because of the cellular architecture employed to maximize spectrum utilization. Together with call admission control (CAC) mechanisms, they enable better optimization of bandwidth use. The primary objective of the research presented in this article is to analyze traffic levels, aiming to optimize traffic management and handling. This article considers the two most popular CAC mechanisms: the resource reservation mechanism and the threshold mechanism. It presents an analytical approach to occupancy distribution and blocking probability calculation in 5G mobile networks, incorporating connection handoff and CAC mechanisms for managing multiple traffic streams generated by multi-service sources. Due to the fact that the developed analytical model is an approximate model, its accuracy was also examined. For this purpose, the results of analytical calculations of the blocking probability in a group of 5G cells are compared with the simulation data. This paper is an extended version of our paper published in 17th ConTEL 2023.

The MPEG-DASH protocol has been rapidly adopted by most major network content providers and enables clients to make informed decisions in the context of HTTP streaming, based on network and device conditions using the available media representations. A review of the literature on adaptive streaming over mobile shows that most emphasis has been on adapting the video quality whereas this work examines the trade-off between video and audio quality. In particular, subjective tests were undertaken for live music streaming over emulated mobile networks with MPEG-DASH. A group of audio/video sequences was designed to emulate varying bandwidth arising from network congestion, with varying trade-off between audio and video bit rates. Absolute Category Rating was used to evaluate the relative impact of both audio and video quality in the overall Quality of Experience (QoE). One key finding from the statistical analysis of Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) results using Analysis of Variance indicates that providing reduced audio quality has a much lower impact on QoE than reducing video quality at similar total bandwidth situations. This paper also describes an objective model for audiovisual quality estimation that combines the outcomes from audio and video metrics into a joint parametric model. The correlation between predicted and subjective MOS was computed using several outcomes (Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and epsilon-insensitive RMSE). The obtained results indicate that the proposed approach is a viable solution for objective audiovisual quality assessment in the context of live music streaming over mobile network.

The highly computationally capable mobile devices and the continuously increasing demand for high data rates and mobility, which are required by several mobile network services, enabled the research on fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks that are expected to be deployed beyond the year 2020 in order to support services and applications with more than one thousand times of today’s network traffic. On the other hand, the huge and complex location-aware datasets exceed the capability of spatial computing technologies. In this direction, the mobile cloud computing (MCC) technology was introduced as the combination of cloud computing and mobile computing, enabling the end-users to access the cloud-supported services through mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, portable computers or wearable devices). The mobile applications exploit cloud technologies for data processing, storage and other intensive operations, as they are executed on resource providers external to the devices. This tutorial article is a comprehensive review of the current state-of-the-art and the latest developments on mobile cloud computing under the 5G era, which helps early-stage researchers to have an overview of the existing solutions, techniques and applications and investigate open research issues and future challenges in this domain.

The advent of the 5G mobile network has brought a lot of benefits. However, it prompted new challenges on the 5G network cybersecurity defense system, resource management, energy, cache, and mobile network, therefore making the existing approaches obsolete to tackle the new challenges. As a result of that, research studies were conducted to investigate deep learning approaches in solving problems in 5G network and 5G powered Internet of Vehicles (IoVs). In this article, we present a survey on the applications of deep learning algorithms for solving problems in 5G mobile network and 5G powered IoV. The survey pointed out the recent advances on the adoption of deep learning variants in solving the challenges of 5G mobile network and 5G powered IoV. The deep learning algorithm solutions for security, energy, resource management, 5G-enabled IoV, and mobile network in 5G communication systems were presented including several other applications. New comprehensive taxonomies were created, and new comprehensive taxonomies were suggested, analysed, and presented. The challenges of the approaches are already discussed in the literature, and new perspective for solving the challenges was outlined and discussed. We believed that this article can stimulate new interest in practical applications of deep learning in 5G network and provide clear direction for novel approaches to expert researchers.

The advent of sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks introduces unprecedented demands for ultra-low latency, terabit-per-second throughput, and dynamic resource allocation across heterogeneous services such as URLLC, eMBB, and mMTC. Traditional resource management approaches lack the adaptability and predictive intelligence required to operate under such conditions. This study proposes a comparative analysis of deep learning models—Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and Transformer architectures—for intelligent resource allocation in 6G environments. Synthetic traffic patterns and benchmark datasets were used to emulate realistic 6G workloads, and models were evaluated using key performance metrics: accuracy, latency, throughput, energy efficiency, and fairness index. Simulations were conducted in Python using TensorFlow and PyTorch frameworks within SDN-based virtualized environments to replicate programmable 6G infrastructures. The proposed hybrid system, integrating CNN, RNN, and Transformer modules, achieved latency reduction of 38%, throughput improvement of 22%, energy savings of 26%, and fairness index gain of 18% compared to baseline models. These findings demonstrate the viability of deep learning for scalable, adaptive, and sustainable resource allocation in next-generation mobile networks. The study contributes a reproducible simulation framework, a performance benchmark across models, and a foundation for future research in federated learning, edge AI, and 6G deployments.

The development of 6G mobile networks will produce many smart Internet of Things devices and data at the network’s edge. Advanced AI technology holds the potential to enable 6G mobile networks to collect and analyze this data for innovative applications and intelligent services. However, the inherent privacy constraints and limited communication resources within 6G mobile networks often make direct data transmission to servers undesirable. Federated learning (FL) is seen as a promising approach to address these problems. Yet, integrating FL into 6G mobile networks presents data heterogeneity issues. In this article, we design and propose a privacy-preserving FL scheme in 6 G mobile networks. The core idea of this scheme is to take both dataset size and the discrepancy between local and global category distributions into consideration to compute the weights of different clients and apply threshold Paillier cryptosystem to perform weighted aggregation on client-encrypted data. Security analysis and experimental results demonstrate the advantages of this scheme in guaranteeing privacy preservation and improving training accuracy. Finally, we present some future directions for the integration of FL and 6G mobile networks.

High definition television (HDTV) video delivery services over IP networks have recently started. To make the delivered high-quality HDTV video comfortable to view, we need to design appropriate delivery systems and then monitor the quality of experience. Currently, subjective assessment is the main method used to quantify video quality. However, it is unsuitable for real time monitoring of video quality. Therefore, we need an objective video quality assessment method that can effectively estimate subjective video quality from the video characteristics. We propose a full-reference-type objective video quality measurement method that is applicable to the evaluation of coding distortions in HDTV. We analyzed the results from applying the conventional method (J.247 Annex A) to HDTV video and improved the conventional method on the basis of those results. We applied fuzzy measure to the conventional method so as to consider the interaction effects of each parameter because the conventional method tends to obtain different characteristics between high quality and low quality regions of video content.