DYNAMICALLY ADAPTING THE TRANSMISSION RATE OF PACKETS IN REAL-TIME VoIP COMMUNICATIONS TO THE AVAILABLE BANDWIDTH

摘要

A system and method for dynamically adapting the transmission rate of packets in real-time voice over IP communications to the available bandwidth. A real-time bandwidth monitor (RTBM) for VoIP applications senses the call path bandwidth between two endpoints (100 and 130) of a VoIP communication and adapts in real-time the packet transmission rate to utilize that bandwidth. If sufficient bandwidth is available, the RTBM (115) selects a low compression, low latency CODEC (110) to offer best possible voice quality to the user. If the bandwidth is constrained, the RTBM degrades gracefully by switching to a high compression CODEC (140). On further bandwidth reduction, the RTBM increases the media frames per packet. Because the bandwidth reduction may be transitory, the RTBM constantly monitors the end-to-end available bandwidth so as to invoke the CODEC/frame per packet combination that provides the best quality of service (QoS).