To ensure seamless playback, video streaming platforms and other media sites rely on Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to deliver content to end-users. While CDNs have been around for several years, recent advancements in CDN technology have led to the emergence of smart multi-CDN, which enables video streaming services to choose the best CDN provider in real time. In this blog, we discuss how smart multi-CDN implementation allows streaming platforms to boost their business by selecting the best CDN provider at all times.
Understanding CDN Providers and Multi-CDN
CDN providers are companies that operate a network of servers in different geographic locations to deliver content to end users quickly and efficiently. CDN providers offer various services, such as content caching, load balancing, and security features. Video streaming services use CDN providers to ensure fast and reliable content delivery to end-users.
Smart multi-CDN is an approach that enables video streaming services to use multiple CDN providers simultaneously. This approach differs from traditional multi-CDN, where video streaming services use multiple CDN providers but choose one as the primary provider. With smart multi-CDN, the video streaming service can switch between different CDN providers in real time based on performance and QoE metrics.
Smart multi-CDN uses a combination of metrics such as response time, availability, and throughput to determine the best CDN provider for a specific request. The metrics are collected in real time from different CDN providers, and the video streaming service chooses the CDN provider that meets the set performance threshold. This approach ensures that the video streaming service always chooses the best CDN provider, leading to faster content delivery and better user experience.
Benefits of smart Multi-CDN
Smart multi-CDN offers several benefits to video streaming services, including:
- Improved Reliability: By using multiple CDN providers, video streaming services can ensure high availability of their content. If one CDN provider goes down, the smart multi-CDN approach can switch to another CDN provider, ensuring that the content is always available.
- Better Performance and User Experience: Smart multi-CDN can choose the best CDN provider based on performance metrics, ensuring faster content delivery and better user experience. This approach also reduces latency, which is critical for live streaming services.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Smart multi-CDN allows video streaming services to use multiple CDN providers, reducing the dependency on a single provider. This approach can also reduce the cost of content delivery as video streaming services can choose the most cost-effective CDN provider based on performance metrics.
Implementing smart multi-CDN to choose the best CDN provider
To implement smart multi-CDN to choose the best CDN provider, video streaming services need to follow the following steps:
- Identify the right CDN providers: Video streaming services need to identify the CDN providers they want to use. It is recommended to choose CDN providers that have the desired regional coverage and offer a well-balanced set of strengths and weaknesses.
- Set a performance threshold and business requirements: Video streaming services need to set performance thresholds for different metrics such as response time, availability, and throughput. The performance threshold should be based on the video streaming service’s performance and business requirements.
- Choose a smart multi-CDN solution: Video streaming services need to choose a smart multi-CDN solution that, like NPAW’s CDN Balancer, can collect real-time performance metrics from different CDN providers and switch between them based on performance thresholds and business rules.
- Test and deploy: Video streaming services need to test the smart multi-CDN solution thoroughly before deploying it to the production environment. It is recommended to test the solution with a small subset of users before deploying it to all users.