Offline to Online Learning for Real-Time Bandwidth Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Gottipati, Aashish, Khairy, Sami, Mittag, Gabriel, Gopal, Vishak, Cutler, Ross
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866914414875115520
author Gottipati, Aashish
Khairy, Sami
Mittag, Gabriel
Gopal, Vishak
Cutler, Ross
author_facet Gottipati, Aashish
Khairy, Sami
Mittag, Gabriel
Gopal, Vishak
Cutler, Ross
contents Real-time video applications require accurate bandwidth estimation (BWE) to maintain user experience across varying network conditions. However, increasing network heterogeneity challenges general-purpose BWE algorithms, necessitating solutions that adapt to end-user environments. While widely adopted, heuristic-based methods are difficult to individualize without extensive domain expertise. Conversely, online reinforcement learning (RL) offers ease of customization but neglects prior domain expertise and suffers from sample inefficiency. Thus, we present Merlin, an imitation learning-based solution that replaces the manual parameter tuning of heuristic-based methods with data-driven updates to streamline end-user personalization. Our key insight is that transforming heuristic-based BWE algorithms into neural networks facilitates data-driven personalization. Merlin utilizes Behavioral Cloning to efficiently learn from offline telemetry logs, capturing heuristic policies without live network interactions. The cloned policy can then be seamlessly tailored to end user network conditions through online finetuning. In real intercontinental videoconferencing calls, Merlin matches our heuristic's policy with no statistically significant differences in user quality of experience (QoE). Finetuning Merlin's control policy to end-user environments enables QoE improvements of up to 7.8% compared to the heuristic policy. Lastly, our IL-based design performs competitively with current state-of-the-art online RL techniques but converges with 80% fewer videoconferencing samples, facilitating practical end-user personalization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_13481
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Offline to Online Learning for Real-Time Bandwidth Estimation
Gottipati, Aashish
Khairy, Sami
Mittag, Gabriel
Gopal, Vishak
Cutler, Ross
Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
Real-time video applications require accurate bandwidth estimation (BWE) to maintain user experience across varying network conditions. However, increasing network heterogeneity challenges general-purpose BWE algorithms, necessitating solutions that adapt to end-user environments. While widely adopted, heuristic-based methods are difficult to individualize without extensive domain expertise. Conversely, online reinforcement learning (RL) offers ease of customization but neglects prior domain expertise and suffers from sample inefficiency. Thus, we present Merlin, an imitation learning-based solution that replaces the manual parameter tuning of heuristic-based methods with data-driven updates to streamline end-user personalization. Our key insight is that transforming heuristic-based BWE algorithms into neural networks facilitates data-driven personalization. Merlin utilizes Behavioral Cloning to efficiently learn from offline telemetry logs, capturing heuristic policies without live network interactions. The cloned policy can then be seamlessly tailored to end user network conditions through online finetuning. In real intercontinental videoconferencing calls, Merlin matches our heuristic's policy with no statistically significant differences in user quality of experience (QoE). Finetuning Merlin's control policy to end-user environments enables QoE improvements of up to 7.8% compared to the heuristic policy. Lastly, our IL-based design performs competitively with current state-of-the-art online RL techniques but converges with 80% fewer videoconferencing samples, facilitating practical end-user personalization.
title Offline to Online Learning for Real-Time Bandwidth Estimation
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.13481