Content Steering: A Standard for Multi-CDN Streaming

Y. Reznik, G. Cabrera, D. Silhavy, S. Pham, A. Giladi, A. Balk, A. Begen, W. Law

Content Steering for DASH (ETSI TS 103 998) is a new standard developed by the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF), defining means for managing media delivery using multiple content delivery networks (CDNs). At the server-client interaction level, this standard is compatible with the CDN steering features of HLS (IETF RFC 8216bis), effectively enabling the same content steering servers to control delivery for both HLS and DASH distributions. This paper reviews the history of this standard's creation, explains its operation principles, and discusses its various features, utilities, and benefits. The paper also surveys the available implementations of streaming clients and servers supporting this standard and the ongoing efforts in DASH-IF and Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) organizations to support the rollout of this technology in the industry. Finally, the paper presents the results of an experimental study of multi-CDN delivery systems conducted by SVTA. These results show significant QoE improvements achieved by a system using content steering.

Print ISSN
Electronic ISSN
2160-2492
Published
2025-01
Content type
Original Research
Keywords
streaming, dash, hls, cdn switching, content steering
DOI
10.5594/JMI.2025/NNRR2188