In Broadcast - July 2013 - 60

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 21 - JULY 2013

N E W S

InMEDIA

The Benefits Of Supporting Multiple CDNs
By enabling content providers and pay-TV operators to select the best CDN for video content delivery,
Broadpeak’s umbrellaCDN ensures a superior quality of experience for viewers…

uality of experience (QoE)
can greatly impact video
consumption. Whether content
providers are delivering live or VOD
content, today’s television viewers
expect a high QoE, or they’ll turn
elsewhere for content. However,
providing a superior QoE isn’t
easy given today’s current content
delivery network (CDN) offerings.
For example, the best CDN for
delivering video content throughout
Europe is not necessarily the same
as for delivering content in South
America. Some CDNs perform better
for certain network service provider
(NSP) subscribers than others. In
addition, some CDNs are more
expensive than others but provide a
better quality of service (QoS), which
is essential for premium content. The
ideal CDN for delivering content can
also change over time due to network
conditions, equipment failures, or
even changes in transit contracts.
The bottom line is: A single CDN
is not the best ﬁt for all situations.
To support a best-of-breed CDN
approach, content providers must
be able to dynamically balance
traffic between different CDNs.
Implementing a multi-provider CDN
approach based on Broadpeak’s
umbrellaCDN solution has
several benefits.

Multi-Provider CDN
umbrellaCDN enables content
providers and pay-TV operators to
select the CDN that best addresses
each request for live and VOD
content. Under this approach, users
can assess several CDN providers,
determine which CDN is the best
ﬁt for each service, and choose the
most appropriate CDN based on
allocation rules that can be applied
dynamically and take into account

umbrellaCDN, an advanced CDN selection solution

changing conditions. The system
ensures there is a correct load
balance between CDNs.
Prior to umbrellaCDN, it was
possible to work with multiple CDNs;
however, operators had to allocate
the CDNs to content manually or
deploy agents in applications or
devices — an expensive and complex
undertaking. With umbrellaCDN,
no installation is required within
reception devices, enabling the
solution to be deployed quickly and
at a low total cost of ownership.
Another limitation of other multiprovider CDN solutions is that they’re
incapable of applying rules related to
timeframes or geographical locations.
umbrellaCDN provides operators
with more ﬂexibility, allowing them
to customise rules based on various
parameters. Content providers
can create parameter-based rules
according to a wide range of criteria,
including end-user geo-location,
end-user ISP, type of content (e.g.

pay vs. free, VOD vs. live, premium
vs. non-premium), and time of day
or day of the week.
Rules are managed through three
distinct modes: quality of service,
where the chosen CDN is the one
that offers the best quality in a given
region; load balancing, whereby
sessions are divided between
several CDNs; and quotas, with
a maximum number of sessions
allocated to each CDN. Content
providers can combine local
operator CDNs with international
CDN service providers and allocate
them according to the location of the
user who is requesting the content.
Finally, other multi-provider CDN
solutions only offer consumption
analytics from each separate CDN.
This makes it difficult and timeconsuming for content providers to
analyse video consumption statistics
based on their customers’ viewing
habits. umbrellaCDN gathers and
centralises information from all CDN

providers, giving content providers
a unified view of consumption
analytics in order to provide the best
QoE to end users.
By centralising the management
of value-added applications, the
system enables content providers
and pay-TV operators to support
important features like geoblocking,
video content replacement, and
unified audience and content
analytics. With geoblocking, there
is no need to conﬁgure each CDN
with the geoblocking parameters, all
of the regions are deﬁned and can
be allocated different rights.
Video content replacement allows
content providers to switch any
request to alternative content, live or
VOD. Uniﬁed audience and content
analytics means operators no longer
need to log into a different interface
for each CDN in order to know the
audience of a speciﬁc content; all of
the session requests are centralised.

The End Result

umbrellaCDN enables content providers to select the best CDN for their video content delivery

As the television landscape evolves,
one thing will never change: the
importance of delivering a high
quality of experience to viewers.
Providing a superior QoE is how
content providers and pay-TV
operators differentiate themselves
from the competition and, in turn,
generate revenue.
umbrellaCDN addresses content
providers and pay-TV operators’ most
critical need, the ability to ﬁnd the best
quality/cost trade-off for the delivery
of their content, by enabling them
to support multiple CDNs. Adopting
a multi-provider CDN approach
based on umbrellaCDN, operators
can deliver an exceptional video and
service quality to their customers at a
price point that is affordable.

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In Broadcast - July 2013

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