Abstract
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has emerged as a personal entertainment source for home users. Streaming IPTV content over a wireless medium with good Quality of Service (QoS) can be a challenging task as IPTV content requires more bandwidth and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are susceptible to packet loss, delay and jitter. This research presents the capacity of IPTV using User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) over IEEE 802.11ac WLANs in good and bad network conditions. Experimental results show that in good network conditions, UDP and TFRC could accommodate a maximum of 78 and 75 Standard Definition Television (SDTV) users, respectively. In contrast, 15 and 11 High-Definition Television (HDTV) users were supported by UDP and TFRC, respectively. Performance of UDP and TFRC was identical in bad network conditions and same number of SDTV and HDTV users were supported by TFRC and UDP. With background Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) traffic, both UDP and TFRC can support nearly the same number of SDTV users. It was found that TFRC can co-exist fairly with TCP by giving more throughput to TCP unlike UDP.