Content Delivery Networks

Delivering live and on demand video services of good quality is quite the challenge for Public Service Media (PSM). It is a new and, by far, the most expensive distribution platform that has to be provided on top of traditional outlets like terrestrial, cable or satellite broadcast models. PSM in the UK, for example, spent in 2014 already more than 14% of their total distribution budget on this outlet to reach an active 2% of their total audience that uses internet to access their content. What happens if this audience grows to 20% in the future?

Cost for online video delivery increases linear with the amount of data that is consumed. If online audiences increase and higher bitrates are applied to increase the quality of the video, this will certainly be the case. PSM use their own or third party Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to cache their content as close as possible to the end user to increase their Quality of Experience (QoE). Internet networks are used by many different content providers and perform on a best effort basis. At certain moments, parts of the network will perform less due to the overall traffic increase which impacts the QoE of the audiences.

EBU Technology & Innovation Workplan

Every two years, the EBU develops a roadmap for technology and innovation activities based on the requirements and inputs given by EBU Members. The result of this roadmap is our bi-annual EBU Technology & Innovation Workplan. Strategic programmes and project groups are set up to focus on specific areas of interest. To access the latest Workplan, click here.

EBU Project Group on Content Delivery Networks

The topic of Content Delivery Networks is part of the EBU's Strategic Programme on Broadcaster Internet Services.

Main activities:

The Strategic Programme Broadcasters’ Internet Services has set up this Project Group to gather requirements for a applying a Multi-CDN environment. Such a technical infrastructure should be able to switch between different connected CDNs dynamically on the basis of (real-time) performance metrics and business rules.

Advantages of such an approach are:

Gain more control of QoE,
Reduce costs for delivery,
Improve risk management.

Besides investigating the technical requirements for Multi-CDN switching, this Project Group will also investigate the use ‘Big Data Analytics’ to monitor QoE and switch dynamically between CDNs.

Join us

If you are interested in Content Delivery Networks, join our group on this topic and participate in the discussions. This group is only open to EBU Members. Some restrictions may apply.