SES and Rutgers University Test Satellite CDN for Streaming, OTT, and 5G

NSF-funded ORBIT wireless network testbed at Rutgers WINLAB, featuring an indoor grid of 400 radio transmitters to simulate a variety of network conditions and proposed mobile services. Photo: Rutgers WINLAB

[Via Satellite 04-19-2016] SES announced the first phase of Content Delivery Network (CDN) development at Rutgers University’s School of Engineering to demonstrate and measure the effectiveness of SES’s CDN overlay solution in meeting the growing demand for streaming Over-The-Top (OTT) video. Conducted at the Wireless Information Network Lab (WINLAB) at Rutgers University, the initial demonstrations will involve satellite for both linear and on-demand OTT content delivery to multiple devices and platforms within the Open-Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks (ORBIT) and Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) wireless test beds at WINLAB. A national demonstration of the satellite-based CDN will make up the second phase of the project, through a collaborative effort involving other universities and their network test beds across the United States.

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,” said Steve Corda, vice president of business development for North America at 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 noted that the satellite CDN will become an indistinguishable part of the Internet and a critical differentiator in OTT delivery. “Typically, most OTT video viewers watch a small percentage of the overall available content, which we believe makes satellite a very attractive CDN choice,” he said. “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.”