Advanced Television

Multicast-based content distribution standard from ATIS

February 14, 2012

Information, entertainment and communications industry standards body ATIS has confirmed that its Cloud Services Forum (CSF) has released the CDN Interconnection Use Cases and Requirements for Multicast-Based Content Distribution (ATIS-0200004) standards document.

This ATIS Standard provides a description of Multicast as a means for distributing content across two Content Distribution Network CDN Providers. It identifies the types of content suitable for Multicast and, for these content types, describes the advantages of Multicast use over Unicast Cache distribution methods. It also describes various Multicast configurations that can be deployed for distribution over multiple CDN Provider domains.

The standard develops use cases and requirements to enable Multicast content delivery and generic lifecycle interactions to support Multicast between pairs of CDN providers as part of a federation. These requirements define the Multicast methods for distribution of increasingly popular content types such as real-time streaming and live content from IPTV.

“Multicast is a highly efficient delivery mechanism for advancing the cloud’s capability to enable many users to access the same content at the same time, which is critical for live events,” said Susan Miller, ATIS president and CEO. “With this new standard completed in only six months, ATIS leads the market in standardising Multicast as a vehicle for content distribution.”

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