Real-Time Video Services and Distributed Architectures

This paper outlines a more effective content management strategy, in which content is distributed in real time and on demand in smaller than whole-title units of granularity. This alternative architecture benefits from a more intelligent caching approach that allows service providers to benefit from both centralized content storage (reducing content management capital and operational expenses) and distributed streaming (which allows for much more efficient and cost-effective bandwidth management). At the same time, this distributed architecture preserves both the end-to-end short latency and unlimited content diversity that today's emerging generation of subscribers demands. In addition, the architecture allows service providers to implement a variety of advanced services, such as remixing of "long-tail" content (niche or user-generated content), which requires short-latency access to subsegments of content in deep content stores. Finally, this paper presents the Cisco® Content Delivery System, which embraces this distributed video architecture to provide service providers with a more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective solution for defining and delivering an extraordinary video experience.