Video traffic plays an increasingly important role in today’s telecommunication networks. Most services are difficult to imagine without video stream transmission, and it is not only IPTV and OTT services, but also the services of augmented reality that are gaining popularity. At the same time, users’ requirements for quality of experience provision are constantly tightened. Therefore, operators need to look for new ways to deliver video content to the user, which will allow the transfer of large amounts of traffic with the appropriate quality of experience. In this article, the possibilities of using SDN networks for the transmission of video traffic are investigated. For this purpose, we have created a laboratory testbed, which consists of a multimedia complex for the delivery of IPTV content and a SDN segment of the network. To estimate the quality of experience of the transmitted video traffic, we used, in addition to the generally accepted parameters, such as delays, losses, throughput, also the Hurst parameter. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.