GOLD
Broadpeak’s Advanced CDN solution enables a major shift in architecture, unlocking common opportunities for ISPs and content owners. Advanced CDN is an architectural evolution of Broadpeak’s CDN, which uniquely integrates three vital components for the future of video distribution: openness to third-party content, dynamicity in operation, and elasticity in deployment.
Advanced CDN
Streaming
Driven by the ongoing migration of video content from broadcast to streaming technology — and by the appearance of numerous, successful streaming platforms — radical changes are impacting the nature of video delivery. CDN technology must adapt accordingly. Broadpeak’s Advanced CDN solution enables a major shift in architecture, unlocking common opportunities for ISPs and content owners. Broadpeak’s Advanced CDN is a major architectural evolution of Broadpeak’s CDN, which uniquely integrates three vital components for the future of video distribution: openness to third-party content, dynamicity in operation, and elasticity in deployment.
Openness: Access to CDN optimization is no longer limited to the content managed by the network operator and can also now benefit the ever-growing number of external content providers. Broadpeak’s solution exposes a set of abstract APIs, including SVA Open Caching, so that any third-party content can be individually managed and monitored thanks to a native, multi-tenant approach. Dynamicity: Considering that video distribution versatility should not be limited to its elasticity aspect, Broadpeak has developed a full stack to allow not only the movement of instances around the network but also constant optimization of their configuration at the application level. Relying on real-time analytics collected at every tier of the system and on A/B testing, features can be dynamically added and fine-tuned through a centralized and operation-friendly user interface.
Elasticity: Based on the 3GPP multi-access edge computing (MEC) standard, all CDN instances are deployed as orchestrated containers, in PoPs or at the edge for better granularity and deep caching, to mobilize infrastructure resources where they are most needed in the network. These principles apply to all Broadpeak distribution components, including caching and advanced concepts such as server-side stream selection control or multicast-ABR quality pipes. Beyond the benefits offered by each of these aspects individually, what makes this solution particularly suited to CDN expectations in the near future is the combinations and interactions that can take place between the three capabilities. Globally, the more content originates from a wider number of providers, each with their own constraints and audience, the more important it is to segment and adapt distribution with full virtualization and video process dynamicity.
The base concept of Broadpeak’s Advanced CDN was successfully tested last year with a research project conducted in partnership with B>COM’s innovation center. During the research project, Broadpeak’s Advanced CDN reached its goal of adapting CDN functions to the particular environment of 5G. The architecture relies on a distributed computing environment governed through the ETSI MEC and 3GPP APIs, assuming mobility constraints and addressing the need to be open to third-party actors.
Based on the results, the technology could successfully be ported to AWS Wavelength infrastructure for mobile edge. Today, the concept has been extended to any IP distribution networks, with the addition of improved centralized management for CDN functions and enriched with feedback from analytics gathered throughout the delivery chain. The solution is expected to be fully integrated into products and will be available commercially at the end of 2021.
