Adaptive 360° Video Streaming over a Federated 6G Network: Experimenting In-Network Computing for Enhanced User Experience

The entertainment and gaming industries continue to evolve, so they are becoming increasingly reliant on advanced network capabilities to deliver immersive, real-time experiences. In-network computing (INC) is a transformative paradigm in the design of the network architecture in 6G networks. It facilitates the offloading of computational tasks from devices to edge nodes and central servers, enabling faster data processing in network nodes and reducing latency and response times for high-demand applications, enhancing efficiency. This way, it will be possible to provide the final users with advanced applications like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). In this paper we introduce a 6G Network Infrastructure testbed designed for application execution and testing, supporting INC, and we present an Adaptive 360° Video Streaming service using INC facilities. The testbed has been designed to represent a vertical application for SLICES-RI and SUNRISE-6G projects. Some numerical results will assesses the performance of this dynamic video streaming system.