Measurement Study of Netflix, Hulu, and a Tale of Three CDNs
Measurement Study of Netflix, Hulu, and a Tale of Three CDNs
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DOI：
10.1109/tnet.2014.2354262
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发表时间：
2015-12-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Steiner, Moritz
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Adhikari, Vijay K.;Guo, Yang;Steiner, Moritz
Netflix和Hulu在美国和加拿大领先领先的内容服务提供商。仅Netflix就占2011年美国峰值下游流量的29.7％。了解Netflix和Hulu的系统架构和性能可以阐明这种大型视频流平台的设计，并帮助改善未来系统的设计。在本文中，我们进行了广泛的测量研究，以揭示其架构和服务策略。 Netflix和Hulu具有许多相似之处。 Netflix和Hulu视频流平台都在很大程度上依赖第三方基础架构，Netflix将其大部分功能迁移到亚马逊云，而Hulu则在Akamai中托管了其服务。这两个服务提供商都采用相同的三个内容分销网络（CDN）来交付视频内容。使用主动测量研究，我们剖析了Netflix和Hulu的OTT流媒体平台的几个关键方面网络条件并优化用户感知的视频质量。我们进一步对Netflix和Hulu使用的三种CDN进行了性能测量研究。我们表明，所有三个CDN上的可用带宽在整个地理位置和地理位置上都有很大差异。我们提出了一种基于测量的自适应CDN选择策略和基于多CDN的视频交付策略，该策略可以显着增加用户的平均可用带宽。
Netflix and Hulu are leading Over-the-Top (OTT) content service providers in the US and Canada. Netflix alone accounts for 29.7% of the peak downstream traffic in the US in 2011. Understanding the system architectures and performance of Netflix and Hulu can shed light on the design of such large-scale video streaming platforms, and help improving the design of future systems. In this paper, we perform extensive measurement study to uncover their architectures and service strategies. Netflix and Hulu bear many similarities. Both Netflix and Hulu video streaming platforms rely heavily on the third-party infrastructures, with Netflix migrating that majority of its functions to the Amazon cloud, while Hulu hosts its services out of Akamai. Both service providers employ the same set of three content distribution networks (CDNs) in delivering the video contents. Using active measurement study, we dissect several key aspects of OTT streaming platforms of Netflix and Hulu, e.g., employed streaming protocols, CDN selection strategy, user experience reporting, etc. We discover that both platforms assign the CDN to a video request without considering the network conditions and optimizing the user-perceived video quality. We further conduct the performance measurement studies of the three CDNs employed by Netflix and Hulu. We show that the available bandwidths on all three CDNs vary significantly over the time and over the geographic locations. We propose a measurement-based adaptive CDN selection strategy and a multiple-CDN-based video delivery strategy that can significantly increase users' average available bandwidth.