At the virtual Content Delivery Summit earlier this month, Tim Siglin, the Founding Executive Director of Help Me Stream Research Foundation, led a panel discussion with experts in CDN management, video streaming, and internet delivery, focusing on Layer 4 in the CDN.
Compira Labs’ founder and Chief Scientist Michael Schapira participated in the event, together with Xavier Leclercq, VP Business Development at Broadpeak, and Stan Pribylov from Celebrium, to talk about the impact of the transport layer on the delivery of high Quality of Experience (QoE) for video streaming, and how its interaction with machine learning techniques and with the application layer could further improve streaming delivery.
Here are some of the topics they discussed:
1. How to effectively deliver UHD live streaming with low latency and at scale
The panel discussed the paradigm shift to live streaming, and how to adapt CDNs accordingly to ensure smooth data delivery.
2. Network aware caching
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) make it possible to use ML to customize internet delivery according to the prevailing network, i.e. wired vs. wireless LTE vs. 5G networks. Injecting intelligence in the transport layer frees internet delivery to move on from the one size fits all paradigm.
3. The benefits of session and content-type awareness in CDN decisions
Not all CDN networks are session-aware, but those that are can allow further customization in layer 4 (i.e. VoD vs. Live streaming) that improve QoE and the delivery efficiency.
4. The importance of accurate analytics from the CDN
Panel participants agreed about the vital need for CDNs to provide accurate analytics that enable users to drill down to session and connection level data, providing visibility to the network behavior and allowing better decision-making on a network level.
5. How to tackle video streaming delivery in a congested network
Congested networks with poor visibility throw up obstacles to live video streaming latency. Participants shared different, creative strategies that CDNs could use to improve delivery for video streaming.
6. New methods to improve network efficiency and service delivery
Finally, new methods for cutting latency and raising network efficiency were shared, such as ISP caching, CMAF based streaming, and multicast ABR streaming.
Compira Labs is a pioneer in ML-powered content delivery. Our software-only solution can seamlessly enable any CDN to deliver best-in-class QoE, increase traffic volumes and reduce delivery latency. Get more information about Compira Labs.