System and method for selective packet discard for the transport of multiple transportation streams of streaming media in packet-based networks

摘要

A system and method is provided for reducing the bandwidth of MPEG transport streams during transmission over a packet-switched network. The system and method identifies characteristics of a plurality of media fragments disposed within each of a plurality of packets of a transport stream, and aggregates the characteristics into a summary value for each of the packets. The summary value is correlated to a priority weighting identifiable by a network element. Each of the packets is marked with the priority weighting, so that the packets may be selectively dropped by a network element in accordance with their priority weightings to reduce the bandwidth of the transport stream.