With the introduction of HTTP/3 (H3) and QUIC at its core, there is an expectation of significant improvements in Web-based secure object delivery. As HTTP is a central protocol to the current adaptive streaming methods in all major over-the-top (OTT) services, an important question is what H3 will bring to the table for such services. To answer this question, we present the new features of H3 and QUIC, and compare them to those of H/1.1/2 and TCP. We also share the latest research findings in this domain.

1. The presentation will start in a few minutes…
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2. Take the Red Pill for H3 and See
How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes
ACM Mile-High Video Conference (MHV’22)
March 1-3, 2022
Minh Nguyen, Christian Timmerer, Stefan Pham, Daniel Silhavy, Ali C. Begen
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (Austria), Fraunhofer FOKUS (Germany), Ozyegin University (Turkey)
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3. ● The Pills HTTP/1.1, H2 & H3
● How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes with H3
● Measure the Depth with proposed H3 Testbed
● Summary
Agenda
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4. The Pills HTTP/1.1, H2 & H3
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5. A Brief History of HTTP
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[1] RFC 1945
[2] RFC 2068
[3] RFC 7540
1996 1997
1991 2015 2016
H3
now

6. H2
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Key
Features
Server Push Stream Priority
Stream Multiplexing
Stream Termination

7. H2
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Non-pipelined HTTP/1.1
Pipelined HTTP/1.1
● Server push
○ 1 request = K responses
○ Reduce request overhead
○ Save round-trip time (RTT)
Server push in H2/H3

8. H2
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● Stream multiplexing
○ Process requests simultaneously
○ Save RTT
HoL
blocking
● Stream priority
○ More important data are pushed faster
○ Be used with stream multiplexing
● Stream termination
○ Terminate unusable data

9. ● Be built on top of QUIC
● Inherit many H2’s features
● What’s NEW?
○ Deal with Head-of-Line (HoL) blocking
○ Provide 0-RTT for faster connection
establishment
H3
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H3
H1.1
Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/08/http3-
core-concepts-part1/

10. How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes
with H3
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11. The benefits of H3 key features
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Default
● H/1.1 = H2 = H3 (QUIC) w.r.t
DASH performance in
different RTT values
Stream
multiplexing/
priority
● Retransmit video
segments efficiently
● Improve 360-degree
video streaming
● H3 > H2 in lossy networks
Server push ● Reduce request overhead
● Reduce latency
● Higher throughput
utilization
Stream
termination
● Reduce unused data in
retransmission techniques
and 360-degree video
streaming

12. Go deeper?
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● Have not been extensively
investigated yet
New priority
mechanism [2]
● In H2 (RFC 7540)
○ Poorly implemented [1]
[1] https://github.com/andydavies/http2-prioritization-issues
[2] https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-
ietf-httpbis-priority-12.html
New ABR algorithms
Integrating H3
features
● Integrate additional
techniques in ABR
schemes
● Traditional approaches
might not get benefit from
H3 in default mode

13. Motivation
● One of the main issues: Quality variation
● Why don’t we upgrade low-quality
segments?
● Target: increase Quality of Experience
H2BR - An H2/H3-aware Retransmission Technique
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14. H2BR Technique
● Use H2/H3 features
○ Server push
○ Stream multiplexing/priority
○ Stream termination
● Experimental results
○ Non-scalable video streaming [1]
■ > 70% lowest-quality watching time decreased
■ 13% QoE score increased
○ Scalable video streaming [2]
■ Video quality increased
■ Quality switched improved
■ H3 provides better results in lossy networks
H2BR - An H2/H3-aware Retransmission Technique
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[1] Nguyen, M., Timmerer, C. and Hellwagner, H., 2020, June. H2BR: An HTTP/2-based retransmission technique to improve the QoE of
adaptive video streaming. In Proceedings of the 25th ACM Workshop on Packet Video (pp. 1-7).
[2] Nguyen, M., Amirpour, H., Timmerer, C. and Hellwagner, H., 2020, August. Scalable high efficiency video coding based http
adaptive streaming over quic. In Proceedings of the Workshop on the Evolution, Performance, and Interoperability of QUIC (pp. 28-
34).

15. Measure the Depth with H3 Testbed
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16. 16
H3 Testbed
● Virtualized server
components for flexible
deployment
● Different bandwidth
trajectories
● Automated test runs via
player workers
● Metric reporting via
SAND/CMCD

17. Summary
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18. 18
Summary
● H2 and H3 bring benefits to HAS when their
features are considered
● However, the question of what we can do with H2
and H3 to improve HAS is still not fully answered
● Need new designs for H3-based ABR algorithms and
download strategies
● Introduced an H3 testbed – a functional tool for
automated testing and providing visualized results

19. Thank you
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minh.nguyen@aau.at @minhkstn linkedin.com/in/minhkstn
daniel.silhavy@fokus.fraunhofer.de @dsilhavy linkedin.com/in/daniel-silhavy-21650a129
stefan.pham@fokus.fraunhofer.de @squaper linkedin.com/in/stefanpham-b241b14b/