Comcast is the latest big name broadband service provider to join Qwilt’s Open Edge platform and create an edge cache CDN that will dramatically reduce the streaming bandwidth burden on the intermediate network that sits between the service provider core and the last mile.
“As entertainment moves to live streaming, and demand for delivery quality continues to increase, an optimized CDN is foundational to supporting the best user experience,” the companies said in a joint statement.
This summer, Comcast introduced the ultimate in 4K entertainment for X1 customers, featuring its highest bitrates with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos spatial audio, all with ultra-low latency that is only seconds behind live action. It is television streaming, along with gaming, that are the initial drivers for the Open Edge platform implementation.
Comcast’s Chief Network Officer, Elad Nafshi, promises incredible benefits to subscribers and to content partners who distribute across the Comcast network. The edge CDN has been made possible because Comcast has been “putting the brains of our network closer to customers”, with distributed access architecture and virtualization.
The Qwilt CDN model is well established. Other customers include Verizon, TIM Brazil, Airtel, J:COM, BT, FastWeb, Telefonica, Vodafone and Turkcell. There is also a whole bunch of U.S. service providers who are members of NCTC (National Content and Technology Cooperative), which represents independent cable, broadband and ISP companies.
The Qwilt Open Edge platform takes video into the service provider core and instead of transporting one stream per viewer over the intermediate network, it sends only one ‘seed stream’ to each edge cache node, which could be ‘tens of miles’, a few miles or just a few blocks away from homes, depending on geography.
In a white paper, Qwilt offers the example of a soccer match with one million viewers, which in a classic CDN would mean one million unicast streams through the intermediate network. With each edge cache node able to serve 40,000+ viewers, only approx. 25 seed streams would be needed. The company says data can be reduced by 80-90% for live events.
Qwilt works closely with Cisco, whose Unified Computing System (UCS), using powerful edge compute switches, provides the local cache power. Cisco says its Nexus 9000 switch, for example, provides industry-leading data centre performance. Qwilt provides a managed service to its service provider customers, maintaining the edge cloud nodes and taking care of scaling. It says the edge cloud establishes a massively distributed layer of compute and storage capability.
The second key part of the Qwilt offer is the way it federates all the edge cloud capacity across its service provider customers and presents this as a single content delivery network – another global CDN to compete with existing global CDNs. Thus, content owners can go to Qwilt to reach into the depths of dozens of service provider networks, taking advantage of the cost and performance benefits associated with edge caching.
This model is underpinned by the use of the Open Caching specifications defined by the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA). These enable an interoperable network of caches for content delivery. Qwilt was a founding member of the SVTA and is considered a leader in Open Caching commercial deployments.
Qwilt’s global delivery network is comprised entirely of service provider edge capacity and the company works with each customer to establish the open edge caches. Qwilt is paid by content owners for helping them deliver content to users with better performance, and the company shares that revenue with the service provider.
As a result, service providers start to monetize their networks directly from the video streaming they carry, rather than only indirectly via broadband subscriptions (where users expect great video experiences in return for their monthly bill). Because of the seed stream versus unicast efficiencies, service providers should not need to invest so much, so quickly, in their core or intermediate networks, either.
Qwilt believes the industry needs this new economic model for streaming, the data efficiencies from seed streams, and improved user experiences that come from caching closer to the edge. In the marketing materials for its global delivery network, the company says we must prepare for a future where streaming video and emerging content enable new types of immersive viewing experiences at global scale. 8K, 360-degree video, VR and the metaverse are examples offered.
The company has previously pointed to the impact that growing demand for streamed services could have, especially in live TV. For example, if 100,000 television subscribers were watching 4K on a widescreen TV, requiring a 20Mb stream, this adds up to 2Tbps of network traffic from the peering point to the edge. If the audience surged to one million for the closing stages of the game, the burden becomes 20Tbps if unicasting across the network.
Turkcell announced its deployment of the Quilt Open Edge Cloud for Content Delivery platform in February for use across fixed and mobile broadband. Qwilt CEO Alon Maor said then: “We are on a mission to build the world’s largest and highest performing all-edge network”.
There are now around 180 service providers making use of the open edge platform, with 1,000 nodes involved. The Comcast deployment provided an important landmark, as it means the majority of U.S. broadband subscribers are now reachable via the Qwilt global CDN.
A growing number of content owners are onboarded, and at IBC recently, Lisa Aussieker, SVP Marketing at Qwilt, highlighted the value of the federated model to content owners looking for international reach, with the onboarding looking the same as it would with any global CDN, like Akamai. “They get access to global delivery, but the delivery looks very different because it is so distributed.”
Qwilt is typically used as one CDN in a multi-CDN approach, and Aussieker claims that in these scenarios, Qwilt performs best against various KPIs. “We have an unfair advantage because we are closer to the end user” she declares, echoing Qwilt marketing that compares caching to real-estate, where the thing that matters is “location, location, location”.
Costs to content providers “are very competitive, but combined with better quality,” she claims.
Service providers also benefit from the federated model. Aussieker explains: “They could create a service provider cloud or CDN and deliver content but they have to go out and sign contracts with all the content providers individually. In our case they work directly with us, and we onboard the content providers.”
Photo shows Lisa Aussieker, SVP Marketing at Qwilt.
