CDN Level Up
How Both Media Businesses And CDN Providers May Benefit From Teleport Solution
In this article, we aim to find out the difference between the regular CDN operation and how does Teleport empower the existing CDN technologies.
Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming is made for media businesses of all kinds to improve the quality and speed of traffic delivery, but also to accelerate existing CDN capabilities being applied by CDN companies.
As a matter of fact, a content delivery network (CDN) was invented as web and media content centralized delivery system. A person or a company willing to deliver media files or stream video into the web had to use free or commercial CDN or create one itself since there was no other way to provide users with the fastest possible experience until decentralized CDN solution was introduced.
Regular CDN features
Let’s have a look at traditional CDN first. In simple words, CDN is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. Its goal is to distribute service spatially relative to end-users to provide high availability and high performance. CDNs serve a large part of the Internet content today, including web objects (text, graphics, and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social media sites.
In the internet ecosystem CDNs play the role of a medium. Different content owners pay CDN operators to deliver their content to the end users. In return, a CDN pays ISPs, carriers, and network operators for hosting its servers in their data centers. The process looks simple and operates with a huge amount of hardware all over the world.
CDN nodes are usually deployed in multiple locations, often over multiple backbones. Benefits include reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, or increasing the global availability of content. The number of nodes and servers making up a CDN varies, depending on the architecture, some reaching thousands of nodes with tens of thousands of servers on many remote points of presence (PoPs). Others build a global network and have a small number of geographical PoPs.
In any way, CDN work requires a great amount of hardware, and its operation subsequently has an impact on and increases the pricing, additional spendings for maintenance, difficulties in troubleshooting the system, etc. At the same time, previously the best way to continuously deliver media content, traditional CDN can’t solve several problems as the limited capacity of servers during the unexpectable rise of the number of viewers, additional settings requirement, or watermarks for media content in term of privacy issue.
CDN cost and quality
So, what is the price for CDN? Actually, this may be considered as a trade secret. However, real prices differ from 2$ to 9$ per Tb of traffic. It is not typical for CDN providers to show prices on public due to additional services they usually provide for clients or negotiate deals behind the scenes.
Today most CDNs going to be charging not for the volume of traffic in peering but charging for the number of viewers. No need to count billions of bytes anymore. It is quite convenient for both parties because the type of signal may remain as good as broadcasters are capable of.
In MicroMarketMonitor’s recent report, it was noted that the North American content delivery network market is expected to grow from $1.95 billion in 2013 to $7.83 billion in 2019. One significant factor driving this growth is end-user interaction with online content. This trend is widely spread these days as the audience demand for streaming video grows exponentially. However, the quality concerned to be poor. According to RapidTvNews.com, 88% of the viewers experience some disappointment from streaming video, this is due to the fact that the video starts up too long, is buffered, there is annoying advertising, the monthly data transfer costs increase and there are problems with public Wi-Fi. This is a huge call to action for media businesses to improve the situation.
Another significant trend in CDN evolution is the end-user involved in media content delivery, this is possible via peer-2peer CDN which is the future of CDN technologies.
Decentralized CDN or Peer-2-Peer CDN
In peer-to-peer (P2P) content delivery networks, clients provide resources as well as use them. This means that unlike client-server systems, the content-centric networks can actually perform better as more users begin to access the content (especially with protocols such as BitTorrent that require users to share). This property is one of the major advantages of using P2P networks because it makes the setup and running cost very small for the original content distributor.
This technology is a foundation of Teleport solution. The Teleport platform uses P2P mesh networks and the Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) standard to optimize content delivery for both media business which already uses CDN servers, and CDN providers to enhance their possibilities.
Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming for the media business
Teleport solution opens broadcasters an opportunity to convert huge numbers of online viewers into an advantage and a reason to ensure a stable and completely balanced delivery channel at a multiple lower price.
This result is achieved through the direct connection of users’ desktop and mobile browsers via WebRTC Protocol for direct file transfers in between without the engagement of the server-based delivery infrastructure.
As the WebRTC protocol is backed by Google and currently supported by more than 75% of modern browsers and mobile devices as well as the latest generation of smart TVs, Teleport can easily cover most of your audience.
WebRTC Live Streaming by Teleport is CDN-agnostic and can accompany both Tier-1 and custom CDNs to ensure sustainable broadcasting quality and cost efficiency.
The combination of CDN and a WebRTC based solution lets you promote your media content, while Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming keeps costs predictable and improves video quality.
The solution is designed for easy integration on your video-streaming receive from larger audiences. website or mobile app — neither the JS code nor the SDK bundle requires additional settings within your current media player or server.
That means it’s available across a wide range of devices and platforms:
- Desktop sites with HTML5-JS web browsers regardless of the OS
- Android smartphones and tablets
- Smart TVs using Android TV,
- iOS smartphones and tablets
- Samsung Tizen & LG webOS
The main advantages of Teleport Media solution for your media business with or without a regular CDN:
- Scalability
Whether you’re thinking about acquiring a new audience or upgrading your video broadcasting format, Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming represents an infinite opportunity for scaling your existing infrastructure.
2. Video quality
Reduce rebuffering by 40% during demand peaks. Double your bitrate and keep user loyalty out of the blue.
3. Fast time to market
Get 4K-ready before your competitors by adding a few lines of JS code to your online video player — it’s infinite and growing bandwidth for your media streaming.
4. Predictable cost
Switch from paying for traffic to paying for viewing time and bring your costs in line with the value you
5. Video Watermark
Fully comply with license agreements using patented technology that delivers watermarked video content across WebRTC network, cutting costs and boosting broadcast quality.
How does Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming accelerate existing CDN?
Teleport script processes the player’s requests for video chunks. Whether the wanted chunk is available in the P2P network and user’s browser supports WebRTC — the player downloads it from Teleport network and only sends a request to CDN in the opposite case. This covers between 50% and 90% of traffic.
Low latency. The initial streams are always loaded from the CDN to deliver the first few frames with the lowest possible delay.
Geo independency. Enhanced video delivery via a decentralized network creates retranslation points where the majority of your audience is located.
Peak performance. Offload up to 90% of your video traffic via the WebRTC protocol, handle spikes, and prevent CDN performance slumps.
Security. We support HTTPS, SCTP, and TLS.
Mobile viewers. Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming identifies connection types to optimize for mobile users and carefully maintains them in mobile networks.
Token authentication, compliance with license agreements
The WebRTC protocol supported by Google introduces a new era in P2P content exchange. While P2P languished in the realm of piracy for far too long, it now represents the original dream of a decentralized peer-to-peer connection network that opens new horizons for network capacity and performance.
Teleport Media offers patented technology for using P2P networks via the WebRTC protocol to deliver premium licensed content. The algorithm identifies video watermarks and builds peer connections based on token authentication, all while maintaining the unique sequence for each authorized user. Unauthorized streams are blocked and reported to the broadcasting server.
Current Teleport Offer to CDN
Using all the advantages of Teleport WebRTC Live Streaming solution traditional CDN providers may get new competitive advantages. We are here to help. We offer partnership to any CDN which is especially beneficial in the case of traffic peaks. Our technology will turn automatically and definitely satisfy the audience of any scale.
Conclusion
Now as we observe the transformation of digital interaction between businesses and their customers, Teleport aims to provide both broadcasters and existing CDNs with breakthrough solutions to enhance content delivery quality and solve problems of viewers experience. Our product is fully customized and may be implemented with or without regular CDN.
We at Teleport are in the wake of the current global media industry trends, and still have one more to mention — a cable cutting, a revolution in broadcasting, which is happening right now and bears new, unexplored challenges for online TV and overall media businesses. For example, piracy, vulnerability to viruses, ease of content transfer to unauthorized users, the fact that mobile devices are shared between users (hence there is the difficulty in correctly identifying), and many more. Teleport is the solution to these issues, and this is how it differs from competitors as we have a background of anti-piracy technology and decentralized content delivery mechanism.
