Enhancing Real-Time Streaming Reliability and Performance Optimization with DASH Content Steering

Daniel Silhavy, Stefan Pham, Alex Giladi, Alex Balk, Ali C. Begen, Will Law

Media streaming over the Internet is dominated by Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) adaptive streaming solutions. These solutions typically host the required media files on multiple content delivery networks (CDNs). To avoid outages and performance problems, selecting the optimal CDN is an essential step in the media streaming workflow. Content steering allows a distributor to switch a player's CDN source through a remote steering service. This paper focuses on the theoretical and practical aspects of content steering for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). We highlight the essential features of the DASH-IF Content Steering specification and demonstrate our implementation in an open-source media player (dash.js). Moreover, we illustrate how streaming metrics based on the CTA-5004 (CMCD) specification and information about the Internet Service Provider can drive the selection mechanism on the steering server. Our results show that content steering enables a seamless transition between different CDNs and has the potential to improve the quality of experience for the end-user significantly.

Print ISSN
Electronic ISSN
2160-2492
Published
2024-07
Content type
Original Research
Keywords
content steering, content delivery network (cdn), dash, hls, adaptive bitrate streaming
DOI
10.5594/JMI.2024/HSKL1799