VIDEO TO THE CDNTH DEGREE: MULTI-CDN DELIVERY, OPTIMIZED FOR BIG VIDEO - Comcast Technology ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
VIDEO TO THE CDNTH DEGREE:
MULTI-CDN DELIVERY,
OPTIMIZED FOR BIG VIDEO
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Video Trifecta: More, Better, Faster.....................................4
Multi-CDN: From Many, One.......................................................8
Multi-CDN: The High-Performance Model..............................10
The Comcast CDN: Built For Video...........................................12
About Comcast Technology Solutions......................................14
1
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are a must-have for any
business looking to deliver digital video to a large audience.
Why? Because when it comes to an engaging playback
experience, it’s all about the distance between the video file
and the consumer. Time is not only of the essence, it’s also the
enemy: Every additional second of delivery time brings more
potential for signal interruptions, latency issues, and buffering,
all of which are contrary to a great playback experience. The
reasoning behind a CDN deployment is simple: the more that
a content provider can shorten the distance that a file must
travel, the less time it takes to make it to the screen.
SO WHY MULTI-CDN?
Simply put, it’s a way to multiply the benefits of CDN delivery.
Each piece of content is worth more today than ever
before, but creative monetization strategies must be built
on a consumer experience that serves quality video reliably,
regardless of how or where it’s viewed. This eBook takes a
look at three things:
• Where video delivery is headed in the face of high demand
for quality and mobility
• The many benefits of multiple CDNs, and how new traffic
routing technologies are elevating quality and cost-efficiency
• How companies can avoid a large-scale infrastructure
buildout and employ a dynamic, video-first CDN strategy
2
NOT ALL CDNs ARE CREATED EQUAL, AND IT’S IMPORTANT TO
ANCHOR YOUR DELIVERY WITH ONE THAT’S PURPOSE-BUILT
TO SUPPORT A GREAT VIDEO PLAYBACK EXPERIENCE ACROSS
ANY FORMAT. BY BUILDING UPON THAT SOLID FOUNDATION
WITH AN ARCHITECTURE THAT SUPPORTS A MULTI-CDN
APPROACH, YOU’RE ABLE TO LEVERAGE THE BEST NETWORK
FOR EVERY UNIQUE CONSUMER VIEWING EXPERIENCE.
3
THE VIDEO TRIFECTA:
MORE, BETTER, FASTER
We humans have evolved into a video-centric species.
Today we’re in the midst of a video renaissance where
there’s a screen in virtually every room, every backpack, and
every back pocket. Opportunities abound to create new
and exciting businesses around video, either as the main
focus or as a value pipeline feeding into a larger strategy.
The demands for more, better, and faster video have made
delivery a make-or-break component for organizations aiming
to turn content into cash flow. These drivers, along with the
inherent complexity of multi-platform delivery, are elevating the
multi-CDN approach from good idea to no-brainer.
4
Let’s set the stage:
EVERYONE WILL BE WATCHING — LITERALLY QUALITY IS A BIG, BIG WORD
According to Cisco Systems’ in-depth research on the future of Better quality is the next hurdle, and content purveyors are poising
visual networking1, today’s operators should be gearing up to feed a themselves to deliver on the promise of next-gen technology.
lot more hungry screens: Traditionally, one of the biggest hurdles for multi-platform video has
simply been that audiences have been raised on broadcast quality.
• Overall IP traffic will increase nearly threefold over the next five years.
Playback across digital devices has always been benchmarked against
• By 2021, connected devices will exceed the human population the reliable excellence of a broadcast experience. Customer expectations
three times over. are not always fair to digital destinations, to be sure, as there are a host
• At the same time, by 2021, video will comprise 80% of all web traffic. of factors outside of an operator’s scope that can wreak havoc on
satisfaction scores. Whether it’s a connectivity issue on the user’s end, an
ISP that’s managing bandwidth, or a device with space limitations —
it makes no difference. Sub-par experiences translate into lost viewers
and lost revenue, plain and simple. Success for today’s video brands
hinges on the ability to execute consistently, on every delivery parameter
that can be improved.
GEARING UP FOR MORE-K
Although 4K demand is just starting to pick up, it’s accelerating
— and consumer appetite for the highest quality is providing
exponential momentum. According to research firm Strategy
Analytics2, the penetration of 4K Ultra HD televisions was just one
percent three short years ago. Three years from now, it will be nearly
50%. For consumers who have 4K screens today, programming that
makes the most out of their TV might be sparse, but it’s a strong
selling point for the providers who can deliver it.
1
“Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021.” Cisco, 16 Sept. 2017, www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/complete-white-paper-c11-481360.html.
2
Watkins, David. “Strategy Analytics Press Releases.” Nearly 50% of US Homes Will Own a 4K TV by 2020, Says Strategy Analytics, Strategy Analytics, 4 Mar. 2015, www.strategyanalytics.com/strategy-analytics/news/strategy-analytics-press-releases/strategy-analytics-
press-release/2015/03/04/nearly-50-of-us-homes-will-own-a-4k-tv-by-2020-says-strategy-analytics#.WcA-89N943g.
5
SPEED TO SCREEN = REVENUE AND RETENTION
It doesn’t matter how many pixels you’re pushing — slow
delivery or service interruptions cost real-world dollars in terms of
mindshare and missed opportunities.
• For on-demand programs to maximize Nielsen C3/C7 revenue
they need to be available to all end-user destinations immediately
after premier.
• Buffering, latency, or other quality issues can destroy a
playback experience. Video performance company, Mux,
reported last year that even small buffering events can torpedo
a viewing session by 39%3.
So, what’s the holdup? For the most part, it’s because size matters.
The gorgeous images of high-quality video rely on more pixels,
which means more data, which means ginormous files to ingest,
transcode, store, and transmit. Where an hour of standard-def video
takes up 12.7GB of space, 1920x1080 hi-def video might take up
to 20GB of space, contingent upon things like framerate, bitrate,
compression, etc. That same hour in 4096x2160 4K content — four
times the resolution of 1080 — will be commensurately four times
larger4. Even if particularly efficient codecs result in cutting that factor
in half, 4K is still, at the minimum, a 2X increase in storage needs
across a video operation. Keeping in mind that “time is the enemy”
for great video delivery, again, it’s a scale thing. The same movie
delivered in 4K takes a lot more network horsepower (and creative
compression) than if it was delivered with lower quality.
3
Dahl, Jon. “Buffering Reduces Video Watch Time by ~40%, According to Research.” Mux Blog, Mux Blog, 14 Sept. 2016,
mux.com/blog/buffering-reduces-video-watch-time-by-40-according-to-research/.
4
“Video Space Calculator.” Video Space Calculator, Digital Rebellion, www.digitalrebellion.com/webapps/videocalc.
6
ALAS, IT’S YOUR CONTENT THAT’S KING, NOT YOUR DELIVERY
Here’s the rub: No matter how smooth and seamless your viewing
experience is, it’s not the primary focus — your content is. A superior
delivery mechanism supports your content so that with every view, you
have the absolute best opportunity to attain your goals and make a
positive, lasting impression. Whether you’re nurturing a long-term viewer
relationship, using video to advertise, or executing video as a component
of any other business plan, the cost of delivery has to result in value to
your overall experience.
A multi-CDN approach demonstrates its value by helping to solve for the
above challenges and, when done right, keeps your operational focus on
“what” you’re delivering instead of “how.”
7
MULTI-CDN: FROM MANY, ONE
Before explaining benefits of multi-CDN, here’s a 50,000 ft. refresher on how the architecture of just one CDN establishes its value.
Your primary (or “anchor”) CDN is a network of servers, strategically scattered across a specific geographical footprint (the United States, for example) in
order to bring video content closer to the many screens that will display it. From a high level, CDNs have a specific architecture to make this happen:
• From an origin server (the initial ‘starting point’ where a piece of • From the mid-tier, content is pulled out to many edge-tier servers
content is introduced and stored), content is then cached on a based on user requests. These caches receive HTTP requests
mid-tier of servers — not only bringing the content closer to the from clients and respond with content out of cache, if available,
end-user, but also protecting the origin from external threats. or pull content from the mid-tier caches.
• The mid-tier is a fan-out caching tier used to pull content from • The more servers there are, the better the odds that a viewer is
origin(s) and distribute to the edge tier. These caches provide going to be in close enough proximity to enjoy “clean” playback,
more than just origin offload, but protection as well. In a top-shelf free from interruption.
CDN, the overall health of the network is under constant traffic
monitoring so that the active pool of servers are known to be in
good shape to accept the content. Additional redundancies and
load-balancing measures are employed to avoid issues.
8
MULTI-CDN = BONUS POINTS . . . OF PRESENCE
It’s that last bullet above that makes the primary (but not the
only) case for a multi-CDN solution. The edge-tier of every CDN
provides the points of presence (PoPs) where your viewers and
your content interact. By employing the use of more than one
CDN, you get more PoPs for your programming — it’s a simple
mathematical benefit.
• Additional CDNs can widen your delivery footprint and
allow you to serve customers from many more locations
and over different network routes. International delivery is
a good example, allowing brands to expand globally by
incorporating CDN footprints in other countries.
• Redundant CDNs — that operate in a similar geography —
can be even more conducive to a great playback experience
because no matter how similar they may look, the servers
are all in different locations. “Stacking footprints” not only
gets your content closer to more end-users, but also
provides better resiliency — and a host of other benefits.
9MULTI-CDN: THE HIGH-
PERFORMANCE MODEL
There are several reasons why a business would switch traffic
between multiple CDNs. The fundamental advantage of CDN
redundancy is that if there’s a problem or failure with one CDN
provider, a “detour” that employs a different CDN can end-run
around the issue and get the content delivered on time. Some
might be driven by specific business rules, such as diverting traffic
to a different CDN once the traffic hits a certain level, or based
on other criteria such as contractual usage limits (read: avoiding
overage charges), or even automatic re-routing when a specific
end-user is not receiving optimal viewing experience. Your CDN
routing rules can be based completely around cost-effectiveness,
choosing your path from origin to device primarily on price.
Video quality is highly susceptible to degradation, however,
which is why, for video, the best multi-CDN solutions are built
to respond to real-time, active health monitoring of the entire
network, emphasizing performance scores over any other
metric. Optimize your delivery with a service that provides
transparency with proactive, automated, and real-time control
over your delivery decision-making. Protecting your audience’s
quality of experience is the way to extract the most value out
of your entire delivery path.
10THE OPEN-SOURCE ADVANTAGE
Open-source CDN design facilitates your multi-CDN plans,
ensuring that compatibility and innovation are nurtured by a
collaborative community of CDN experts. By selecting a CDN
that’s not hamstrung by proprietary technologies, you provide
yourself with more control over your network, and can more
effectively customize and improve how your video content
is delivered. Whether initiated by businesses, nonprofits, or
individual users, open-source projects are about sharing
knowledge for the greater good of all CDN users, enabling
them to augment and accelerate development efforts.
• The Comcast CDN, for example, is an active part of the
open-source community. Our commercial CDN uses the
open-source ‘Apache Traffic Server’ caching engine and
we regularly contribute to this open-source project. We
even have our own ATS committers on staff.
• Comcast also developed and open-sourced a caching
control management system called ‘Apache Traffic
Control,’ that allows users to tie together many ATC
caches to form a large-scale CDN. The Traffic Control
software is available in Github and includes a Traffic
Router, Traffic Ops, Traffic Vault, Traffic Monitor, Traffic
Stats, and Traffic Portal.
• We are proud to say that other companies are actively
using Apache Traffic Control. A recent example is Cisco,
which created a commercial CDN offering for service
providers on top of Apache Traffic Control.
11THE COMCAST CDN:
BUILT FOR VIDEO
Content owners and distributors understand that
in order to remain competitive, delivery strategies
need to evolve faster than the insatiable appetite for
streaming video, online gaming, and large media
downloads. Today, the consumer experience with
online content should be at least as good — if not
better — than that of traditional broadcast video.
Comcast Technology Solutions solves for this with a
tailored content delivery network (CDN) architecture
specifically designed to deliver online media at scale.
Extraordinary experiences to every screen must be
consistent and reliable. We can get you there.
12THE COMCAST CDN: MORE THAN JUST “A BIGGER NET”
Comcast Technology Solutions offers one of the most broadly
deployed caching platforms in North America, comprised of over
230 CDN PoPs. The extensive scale and reach of the Comcast CDN
can readily serve as your primary or standalone delivery network;
however, our open architecture and flexible commercial terms allow
it to easily tie into a multi-CDN environment, aligned to your specific
objectives and geographical needs.
• Leverage the Comcast CDN to deliver broadcast-quality content
as a pure-play CDN. Or, use our smart-switching technology
to integrate the Comcast CDN into your multi-CDN fabric. Our
Online Video Platform enables switches based on geography,
load, or network.
• Support all forms of HTTP-based media and enable a seamless
experience across any device.
• Avoid being locked into a proprietary solution: Comcast
Technology Solutions keeps you protected from “vendor lock”
with a powerful suite of standards-based features.
• Protect your content with a robust set of security layers and protocols.
• Costs are optimized not only through competition within your
vendor ecosystem, but also through a unified origin — reducing
costs for storage and transport/egress.
13ABOUT COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Comcast Technology Solutions provides a portfolio of media, entertainment, and technology solutions. We invent technology that solves industry challenges, reimagines what is possible, and transforms business through new innovations. Built on Comcast’s know-how, proven facilities, platforms, and infrastructure, Comcast Technology Solutions offers more than 20 years of reliable real-world broadcast and digital experience. We partner with customers to redefine business strategies and deliver the future to global audiences. FIND OUT MORE 800-824-1776 | ComcastTechnologySolutions.com ComcastTechnologySolutions@comcast.com © 2019 COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
You can also read
