Technology
UltraBand Media Caching Software
PeerApp’s UltraBand solutions are deployed inside the wireline or wireless operator’s network to optimize network resources, and meet the growing demand for video streams and downloads. PeerApp’s UltraBand system delivers significant benefits to network operators, including operational savings associated with bandwidth costs, accelerated content delivery, and better utilization of network resources. These benefits have a direct positive impact an operator’s margin and provide their subscribers with a vastly improved quality of experience (QoE) for video streams and file downloads. By improving their subscribers’ Internet video experience, operators improve the brand image and competitiveness, and, in turn, realize subscriber and revenue growth.
PeerApp’s video and P2P capability caches, accelerates and controls traffic from increasingly popular video sharing web sites YouTube, RapidShare, MegaUpload, BitTorrent, MySpace, Facebook and others. This function is implemented in PeerApp’s UltraBand family and supports caching for FLV, SWF, MPG, MGEG and WMV file types. The solution does not require proxy servers, “super-peers,” or any changes in client configuration.
Background
Caching Technology for the Internet became popular in the mid 1990’s to address a huge increase in Internet usage associated with basic HTTP Web traffic. As broadband services replaced dial-up services, users taxed the Internet’s infrastructure creating network congestion throughout the network. However, as the Internet infrastructure grew through a massive investment in fiber, the value of caching small web objects decreased. However, a decade later the Internet finds itself in a similar predicament, except this time the problem is caused by a massive adoption of Internet Video, both streaming and downloads. This problem is not likely to be addressed through network capacity upgrades as traffic growth is now exponential fueled by an increase in video demand, multiplied by the increase in video quality which leads to increasingly larger objects. Web 2.0 applications now dominate all traffic growth. These applications include social networking, video sites like YouTube, and P2P sites based on applications like BitTorrent. Applications like these now account for 60%-75% of all consumer Internet traffic.
The good news is that Media Caching has replaced Web Caching as a more complete solution to this problem. Media Caching and Web Caching are very similar conceptually. Any frequently accessed object is held temporarily in a system in the network located closer to the end user. The benefit is that backhaul or transit traffic is alleviated, and end user performance is improved. However, Media Caching has a much larger impact on the network costs because it addresses up to 75% of the traffic. The savings on bandwidth and network infrastructure as a result are huge.
Video and P2P Caching
PeerApp’s UltraBand solutions are deployed inside the wireline or wireless operator’s network to optimize network resources, and meet the growing demand for video streams and downloads. PeerApp’s UltraBand system delivers significant benefits to network operators, including operational savings associated with bandwidth costs, accelerated content delivery, and better utilization of network resources. These benefits have a direct positive impact an operator’s margin and provide their subscribers with a vastly improved quality of experience (QoE) for video streams and file downloads. By improving their subscribers’ Internet video experience, operators improve the brand image and competitiveness, and, in turn, realize subscriber and revenue growth.
PeerApp’s video and P2P capability caches, accelerates and controls traffic from increasingly popular video sharing web sites YouTube, RapidShare, MegaUpload, BitTorrent, MySpace, Facebook and others. This function is implemented in PeerApp’s UltraBand family and supports caching for FLV, SWF, MPG, MGEG and WMV file types. The solution does not require proxy servers, “super-peers,” or any changes in client configuration.
Media Caching vs. Web Caching
While Media Caching and Web Caching are very similar conceptually, the reason why Media Caching, specifically for Video and P2P, replaced Web Caching as the dominant technology for network operators is due to the following points:
- With the popularity of Internet video and Web 2.0 applications, large media objects now dominate traffic growth and account for two thirds of traffic, while Web browsing objects are small and do not consume significant portion of the access network bandwidth
- Traditional web objects are small and do not consume large amounts of bandwidth.
- Traditional web objects change frequently and often times daily which reduces repeatability and hit ratio.
- Large media objects like video or software upgrades tend to be very static and viral in nature resulting in very high repeatability.
The caching system running UltraBand software is deployed in operator’s network in conjunction with network element responsible for redirection of cacheable traffic to the cache.
UltraBand optimizes the transmission of data sessions established between ISP subscribers and Internet content sources, such as Web servers, CDN networks, P2P nodes etc., supporting all of the HTTP services and P2P protocols in a single multi-protocol cache engine.
The cache does not impact or intercept non-data transactions, such as search and control session in P2P networks, and does not participate in P2P networks as a peer.
It operates as a fully transparent network cache and doesn’t have an IP address that is visible to the subscribers, HTTP servers or P2P network participants.
UltraBand cache propagates all content transactions from and to broadband subscribers in a transparent fashion, fully preserving content application business logic (e.g. pay-per-click, peer ratings, conditional access provisions etc.), as would be exercised by the applications without the cache in place.
The cache transparency guarantees that the content served from cache is always up-to-date and available outside of the service provider network, as required for compliance with applicable legislation for service provider liability protection (e.g. US DMCA (1998), EU E-commerce directive (2000) and other countries legislation that adopted DMCA-like legal requirements for caching)
Operation Overview
Subscriber requests for specific HTTP or P2P based files are intercepted in real time by a Layer 4 or 7 device on the operators network and redirected to servers running PeerApp UltraBand software. The UltraBand software includes an advanced parsing mechanism that analyzes the traffic and directly forwards sessions that are not interesting to the media caching application. Traffic is parsed and classified on the basis of file type, e.g. flv, wmv, mov, etc. Downloads and video streams are assessed based on download frequency, size of file, last download, etc., to determine their caching potential. Frequently requested – popular – media files establish a caching priority over infrequently or rarely requested files.
For each streaming or download request, the UltraBand will determine whether the requested file has been previously cached. The UltraBand will also determine the integrity of the content to ensure that cached content is valid, up-to-date and what the subscriber requested. If the file exists in the cache, the UltraBand will stream or download the file to the requesting subscriber(s). By serving the data from within the service provider network, traffic over transit and peering links is reduced and delivery is accelerated.
The diagram below describes how transparent caching works in detail.
1. A subscriber requests a content object from a remote server or site. A redirector (router, switch or DPI device) forwards the request to the UltraBand cache. Interpretation of the file request is based on the information contained within Layer 4 or layer 7 of the requesting data packets.
2. The entire session is forwarded to the remote site or P2P clients without interference from the UltraBand. If there is any authentication or tracking of usage from the remote site, that functionality is preserved in its entirety.
3. Once the remote site or peers have decided to transfer to object, the UltraBand inspects that object during the transfer. If the requested file exists in the UltraBand’s storage arrays, the file transfer request form the originating sites/server is stopped.
4. The UltraBand delivers the file or object to the subscriber transparently - as if from the origin server or site. Delivery of the content occurs at wire speed, giving the user the best possible quality of experience.
Benefits
Network Optimization and Transit Bandwidth Savings
PeerApp’s UltraBand software dramatically improves transit link bandwidth efficiency by reducing bandwidth required to deliver video streams and large file downloads. Cached content is delivered from the UltraBand storage arrays. The volume of video content delivered (“cache out”) expressed in bandwidth, Mbps or Gbps
The figure below is a representative example of bandwidth savings provided by the UltraBand monitoring interface – UBView:
Cache out bandwidth (~1.9 Gbps) is the bandwidth delivered from the UltraBand’s cache storage arrays and is equal to approximately 40% of the total media traffic bandwidth delivered to subscribers.
Network Optimization and Transit Bandwidth Savings
PeerApp’s UltraBand software dramatically improves transit link bandwidth efficiency by reducing bandwidth required to deliver video streams and large file downloads. Cached content is delivered from the UltraBand storage arrays. The volume of video content delivered (“cache out”) expressed in bandwidth, Mbps or Gbps
The figure below is a representative example of bandwidth savings provided by the UltraBand monitoring interface – UBView:
Cache out bandwidth (~1.9 Gbps) is the bandwidth delivered from the UltraBand’s cache storage arrays and is equal to approximately 40% of the total media traffic bandwidth delivered to subscribers.
Accelerated Media Content Delivery
The UltraBand improves quality of the subscribers’ video experience (QoE) by caching and accelerating the delivery of popular content from within the service provider network. The UltraBand achieves data rates close or equal to a broadband subscriber’s maximum subscription rate - the fastest possible rates of the access network.
The following HTTP Clear vs Cache Service Figure is a representative example of the acceleration of media content for an network operator provided by UBView:
The average data rate for all subscribers receiving non-cached videos over Internet transit links (“Clear”) is less than 256 kbps and produces a suboptimal video experience. Cached videos will be streamed or downloaded at much faster rates, approximately 1.24 Mbps. In this example, subscribers stream videos 5 times faster than non-cached media content. The UltraBand typically provides 4X to 8X times improvement, depending on the network.
Drive Subscriber Growth and Revenue
By localizing the traffic to delivery popular video files, PeerApp’s UltraBand™ supports subscriber growth without massive investments in additional network infrastructure. By improving the network efficiency for video delivery, more content can be delivered without oversubscription of costly transit and peering links. In addition, the accelerated delivery of video is an excellent vehicle to showcase and promote premium price points for top-tier broadband packages of 100Mbps and more.
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| Over 65% of the today’s consumer broadband bandwidth is being consumed by Internet Video and file sharing services based on HTTP and P2P protocols. UltraBand’s Software provides a network operator with 20 Gbps scale and is the only multi-service, multi-protocol Media Caching and Content Delivery solution. It supports an open system architecture and eliminates the need for point solutions or proprietary hardware. It supports all of the most popular Internet Video services and applications from a single caching cluster. Benefits
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