UKERNA CDI Trial Infrastructure for Content Delivery Steve Williams University of Wales Swansea

Focus on issues in deployment now… but keep the vision in mind.

Previously on streaming… Commercial sector –Cable TV –Video on Demand, live broadcast –Dedicated, secure, purpose built networks Academic sector –Local distribution of local and other content –Distribution splitting of live content (SURFNet 2500 viewers) –No caching of on-demand content –Multi-service, multi-purpose, multi-administrative-domain networks –Some commercial providers just don’t get it!

Design and deploy an extensible, standards-based architecture that is scaleable to the needs of the UK academic community

Scaleability 10 Gigabit SJ4 & GÉANT –1500 high quality video streams (7Mbps MPEG-2) –Coleg Gwent has 30,000 students! SJ4 now connects HE, FE and Schools – how many… –close your eyes and think of a big number – dark isn’t it –All want video – yesterday! –Access-link limitations (FE-England 2Mbps) Server farms not enough –Content is never where you want / expect it to be –Need to use network resources efficiently

Transport options Multicast –Yeah, right! I really do wish… Simulated / partial multicast / unicast –Proxy-based live-stream splitting –Proxy-based on-demand caches

Server farm Institution proxy and cache Clients SJ4

Software Kasenna Mediabase XMP SE –Running on IRIX and Linux –Commercial CDNetworks, on-demand & live cable-nets via set- top boxes etc (e.g. Kamas, Utah…) –Prefix caching Real Networks –Helix Universal Internet Server –Helix Universal Gateway –Running on Linux Monitoring –Cisco SAA –mySQL & scripts

Hardware Core –SGI Origin TP900 storage pack –Dell 2950 Edges –Sun LX50 (3 x 70GB) –Dell 2900 (6 x 73GB) –Origin TP Terabytes content storage available Monitoring –Cisco 805 / 7206

Deployment issues Use MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Mediabase now only supports one MPEG-2 plugin So use MPEG-4 only… (seen as the future by most) Issues in caching MPEG4 on Mediabase –Caching does not work at all in XMP SE (bug fix soon?) –MPEG 4 seen as the future for most CD across Europe Caching MPEG2 –Realtime mode only –Prefix caching works

Hosting Server Scaled to suit distribution model –Processor –Network –IO throughput –Disk size –O/S –Licensing may affect choices (per server – per site)

Network requirements Depends on distribution model To QoS or not to QoS… Videoconferencing metrics –Packet loss < 0.25% –Jitter < 30ms –Latency (OWD) < 50ms Videoconferencing traffic profile…

Example of 384 Kbps Video (30 fps) Conferencing Traffic (CIF) “I” frame is a full sample of the video “P” and “B” frames use quantization via motion vectors and prediction algorithms “P” and “B” Frames 128–256 Bytes “I” Frame Bytes “I” Frame Bytes 15pps 30pps 600Kbps 32Kbps

Streaming metrics –Packet loss – critical for some CODECs –Latency & jitter – much less critical –Need to quantify Streaming traffic profile…

Streaming bandwidth

… QoS –Impact of applying QoS AF-PHB on an aggregated tcp / udp transfer stream –Sizing the AF bandwidth –tcp backoff under congestion within the aggregate

Where are we now…

Kasenna Mediabase XMP SE in Reading C-PoP Quicktime Clients Direct Delivery from Mediabase

Kasenna Mediabase XMP SE in Reading C-PoP Kasenna Mediabase XMP SE at Institutions Quicktime Clients SJ4 Proxy / Cache Delivery from mediabase

Helix Universal Internet Server Helix Universal Gateway Quicktime & RealMedia Clients SJ4 Proxy / cache delivery from Helix

SJ4 Monitoring the net mySQL server Cisco SAA Web server

Don’t forget the user interface…

Steve Williams University of Wales Swansea