On Monday 18 April 2016, the first phase of content delivery network (CDN) development at Rutgers University's School of Engineering was announced by SES S.A. to demonstrate and measure the effectiveness of the satellite provider's CDN overlay solution in meeting the growing demand for streaming over-the-top 8OTT) video.

Initial demonstrations are being conducted at the Wireless Information Network Lab (WINLAB), involving satellite for both linear and on-deman OTT content delivery to multiple devices and platforms within the ORBIT (Open-Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks) and GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) wireless test beds. The second phase of the project will be comprised of a national demonstration of the satellite-based CDN across other US universities and their network test beds.

SES enables programmers to reach more than 100 million U.S. television households through virtually every cable TV, IPTV and direct-to-home provider, positioning SES to accompany media and entertainment companies into the realm of OTT. By delivering and caching OTT content across these distribution points, SES can help television networks, content producers, and cable and wireless providers meet escalating OTT demand with the reliability and scalability of traditional broadcast television. Rutgers researchers will also be looking at applying the strengths of satellite in support of future networks, including an essential role in the development and deployment of 5G.

"As demand for streaming linear and on-demand content bogs down terrestrial networks, satellite’s inherent point-to-multipoint and multicast capabilities make it the ideal content delivery network for OTT," explained Steve Corda, Vice President, Business Development North America for SES. "The demonstrations at Rutgers University’s WINLAB are designed to compare the scalability and reliability of a satellite-based CDN with terrestrial networks."

Corda further pointed to satellite CDN as an important differentiator in OTT delivery, commenting: "Typically, most OTT video viewers watch a small percentage of the overall available content, which we believe makes satellite a very attractive CDN choice. The activity with WINLAB will explore intelligent content caching and routing to determine when it makes sense to deliver over-the-top video via satellite or terrestrially, and when to cache that content at the network edge."

Professor of electrical and computer engineering and WINLAB directo at Rutgers University, Dr. Dipankar Raychaudhari, similarly described the integration of satellite into CDN as a significant new form of delivery mechanism to OTT content providers, stating: "Working with the world’s leading satellite operator, SES, we look forward to exploring the potential benefits of satellite distribution options for next-generation content delivery networks."

 

Photo by SES