The methods and the feasibility of frame grouping in internet telephony

Grouping multiple voice frames into a single IP packet ("frame grouping") is a commonly mentioned approach to saving bandwidth in IP telephony. But little is known as to when, how, and how much frame grouping should be done in Internet environment. This paper explores the feasibility and the methods of frame grouping based on Internet delay measurement. Specifically, we propose an adaptive frame grouping method that minimizes the delay violation while reducing the bandwidth usage by as much as a factor of two under real Internet delay fluctuations. The performance of the method is evaluated as it is used against a single voice stream and then against multiple voice streams.