CDN Mesh Delivery Capabilities

Updated by Jim Greene on Feb 13, 2020
Article Code: kb/1281

Lumen® CDN Mesh Delivery is an advanced implementation of the WebRTC standard that enables delivery of live and video on-demand (VOD) content across a meshed topology from a CDN and between end user devices.

Tier 1 broadcasters can access the following technology for live streams, catch-up TV, user generated content, as well as ad or subscription-based VOD content.

Platform compatibility

  • Web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chromium-based browsers)
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Android TV
  • tvOS
  • FireTV
  • all other Android-based STBs
  • Chromium-based STBs
  • Chromecast
  • Samsung TVs (Tizen 3.0+)
  • LG TVs (WebOS 3+)

Player compatibility

  • hls.js
  • dash.js
  • video.js
  • Skaka Player
  • Flowplayer
  • Clappr
  • JW Player
  • THEOPlayer
  • Bitmovin Player
  • RadiantMP
  • Castlabs
  • Brightcove Player
  • Azure Media Player
  • thePlatform MPX Player
  • AMP
  • Kaltura Player
  • ExoPlayer
  • NexPlayer
  • AVPlayer

Custom players

  • Can integrate with custom HTML5 players upon request
  • Can integrate with custom Android & iOS-based players upon request

Media format support

  • HTTP Streaming formats supports: DASH, HLS, Smooth Streaming
  • Supports both live and VOD streaming, without adding any latency for live
  • CMAF support
  • Support for multi-bitrate streams

Media features

  • DRMs, tokens, geo-blocking & authentication mechanisms supported
  • SSAI providers support: Amazon Media Tailor, Yospace, AdInsertion Platform
  • Supports all common media features like subtitles, multi-audio, DVR, fallback URLs, etc.

Security features

  • Mesh network cryptographic integrity checks
  • Domain whitelisting
  • App secret key whitelisting
  • Fully encrypted communications with the backend (HTTPS & WSS)
  • DNA backend authentication and matching features
  • Fully encrypted DTLS mesh network communications

DNA dashboard - Web GUI to monitor and control

  • Monitor DNA vs CDN traffic in volume and throughput
  • See number of concurrent users over time
  • See details per stream and per platform
  • QoS data: buffering ratio over time

Data API

  • Basic Data API:
    • DNA & CDN traffic over time
    • Concurrent viewers over time
    • Buffering ratio over time
    • Top 100 streams in traffic, bandwidth and audience

Advanced data analysis

  • Advanced Insights API (to be released in December) allowing multidimensional queries including:
    • Platform
    • Live & VOD
    • Stream
    • SiteId
    • Country
    • ISP
  • Custom Efficiency Reports per customer upon request (paid service), accessing and compiling data from our Hadoop data pipeline

Dashboard real-time monitoring

  • Real-time monitoring panel showing top streams with DNA vs. CDN efficiency and audience

Alerting and reporting

  • Automatic reporting interface that can send daily, weekly and monthly reports on efficiency and traffic
  • On-demand alerting service from our customer support if we detect anything unusual in different metrics: efficiency, audience, QoS, new release, etc.

Dashboard configuration

  • Create properties to use different configuration options for different types of content (live vs. VoD, premium vs. free, etc.)
  • SSAI detection
  • Range request detection
  • Wifi and cellular network upload and download configuration
  • Activation Ratio feature for easy ramp-up and full control over the mesh network
  • Activation threshold for VOD: activate the DNA plugin only on the most popular streams with more than 3 active users in the last 20 minutes

Client-side configuration and API

  • Configuration: ContentId, asynchronous loading, siteId for DNA Enterprise
  • Client API:
    • Per-user traffic data
    • Upload and download control API per network type

Client-side optimization features

  • UDP-based delivery, better resource utilization than for HTTP/TCP
  • 100% transparent for end-users: nothing to install
  • In-segment multisourcing: pre-fetching each segment from several peers at the same time
  • Adaptive Device Resource Usage: our module constantly monitors core health metrics on the device (CPU, memory, QoS, battery, etc.) to adapt the efficiency algorithms to the capabilities of the device in real time
  • Advanced congestion control algorithms
  • Protection against uplink saturation
  • Pre-buffering from other peers
  • Dynamic buffer level configuration (patented)

Matching features

  • Smart matching via machine learning by network topology, ISP, region, city, etc.
  • Can restrict matching between specific ISPs or inside specific ISPs

SLA

  • 99.99% uptime
  • Instant and seamless fallback to CDN in case of any issues
  • Multi-region backend for better resilience and high availability
  • Can overcome short CDN downtimes by offloading delivery to the peer network

More information: Technical Brochure