• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.626-636
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• 2009

In Mobile IP-enabled wireless LAN (WLAN), packet flows are corrupted due to the handoff of a mobile node (MN) at the link and network layers, which results in burst packet losses and can cause temporary buffer underflow in a streaming client at the MN. This transient behavior hurts time-sensitive streaming media applications severely. Among many suggestions to address this handoff problem, few studies are concerned with empirical issues regarding the practical validation of handoff options on the time-sensitive streaming media applications. In this paper, targeting seamless streaming over Mobile IP-enabled WLAN, we introduce a seamless media streaming framework that estimates accurate pre-buffering level to compensate the handoff latency. In addition, we propose a link-layer (L2) assisted seamless media streaming system as a preliminary version of this framework. The proposed system is designed to reduce the handoff latency and to overcome the playback disruption from an implementation viewpoint. A packet buffering and forwarding mechanism with L2 trigger is implemented to reduce the handoff latency and to eliminate burst packet losses generated during the handoff. A pre-buffering adjustment is also performed to compensate the handoff latency. The experimental results show that the proposed approach eliminates packet losses during the handoff and thus verify the feasibility of seamless media streaming over Mobile IP-enabled WLAN.