QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) is an experimental and low-latency transport network protocol proposed by Google, which is still being improved and specified in the IETF. The viewer's quality of experience (QoE) in HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) applications may be improved with the help of QUIC's low-latency, improved congestion control and multiplexing features. In this master thesis, we measured the streaming performance of QUIC on wireless and cellular networks in order to understand whether the problems that occur when running HTTP over TCP can be reduced by using HTTP over QUIC. The performance of QUIC was tested in the presence of network interface changes caused by the mobility of the viewer. We observed that QUIC resulted in quicker start of media streams, better streaming and seeking experience, especially during the higher levels of congestion in the network and had a better performance than TCP when the viewer was mobile and switched between the wireless networks. Furthermore, we investigated QUIC's performance in an emulated network that had a various amount of losses and delays to evaluate how QUIC's multiplexing feature would be beneficial for HAS applications. We compared the performance of HAS applications using multiplexing video streams with HTTP/1.1 over multiple TCP connections to HTTP/2 over one TCP connection and to QUIC over one UDP connection. To that effect, we observed that QUIC provided better performance than TCP on a network that had large delays. However, QUIC did not provide a significant improvement when the loss rate was large.

QUIC is a multiplexed transport protocol over UDP. It was originally proposed by Google. It has promising features like;

• ● Reduced Handshake Latency
• ● Improved Congestion Control
• ● Improved Loss Recovery
• ● Multiplexing Streams

These features are promising and may help to improve viewer experience in HTTP adaptive streaming applications.

QUIC can help us to

• ● Start media streams more quickly
• ● Reduce seeking latency
• ● Cope better with frequent connection changes

Player Features

• ● Python based
• ● TCP and QUIC support integrated as subprocess
• ● Frame-seek (fast-forward) ability
• ● BASIC, SARA, BBA-2 adaptation algorithms

Conclusions

• ● QUIC reduces wait times and rebuffer rates without reducing playback bitrate
• ● QUIC outperforms TCP when frequent network changes occur
• ● QUIC’s benefits are greater in networks with larger delay (e.g., early generation 3G networks)

QUIC is still evolving in the IETF; should there be significant changes, the tests will need to be repeated

• ● https://quicwg.org
• ● https://github.com/quicwg