Integration of an open-source network simulator (NS) and a video encoder-decoder (JM) for network video streaming in an educational platform

The international community is heavily reliant on the Internet to provide services such as video phones, video conferences, video-on-demand, tele-shopping, web-advisement and virtual reality. Tertiary networks and telecommunications engineering students are required to learn all aspects about the Internet and Internet services. The open-source, research and teaching platform, Network Simulator (NS) was integrated with the open-source Joint Model (JM) H.264/AVC encoder-decoder to educate students about computer networks. On this integrated educational platform, videos can be encoded and encapsulated into network packets with modifications to JM encoder source code. These packets are sent across a NS simulated network with a simulated NS multicast server. NS multicast clients subscribe to NS multicast servers. Other network traffic can compete with the multicast packets and cause congestion. Traffic shaping, fairness and other networking techniques can be simulated with real video data. Packet loss in such an environment is inevitable. Multicast clients receive the video stream with some losses. Clients' data can be decoded using a modified JM decoder. Lost data can be concealed using error concealment techniques or reconstructed with losses. The integration of NS and JM is ideal to teach the next generation's network and telecommunications engineers, all aspects of network traffic including streaming media, streaming protocols, subscription, traffic congestion, traffic shaping and fairness. This paper describes the necessary modifications to JM and NS and gives examples of educational exercises and discussions.