The most important part of television services is content. Content determines how attractive the services are for viewers. The vast amount of content coming from various sources must be efficiently processed and delivered to users. Of course, to do this, there are many obstacles to overcome.  First you need storage, which is often very expensive to operate and has limited throughput. Then you need a streaming server, tasked with saving storage space and effectively caching content. Moreover, if the data center is geographically distant from the user, the data delivery time increases along with the number of network nodes, which also increases the price.

Thanks to nangu.TV technology, it is possible to elegantly resolve these problems and effectively deliver customized content to customers, which in the Czech Republic include leading operators such as O2, T-Mobile or Czech Television with its i-vysílání project. Technology products can effectively manage streaming, reduce data center hardware costs and even cut costs for customers.

Streaming management

When specific content is requested, the nangu.TV streaming controller decides which server will be used to deliver it to the user. When making this decision, a key role is played by the geographic location of both the user and the server, and whether the content the user is looking for is on the server. Users consuming the same content must be grouped together on a single server. This increases efficiency and minimizes costs. The streaming controller can also limit the number of users of a single household who can watch certain video content at the same time. It is also able to centrally analyze playback content and create a viewer metric. This eliminates the need to implement these metrics in client applications.

CDN servers

nangu.TV CDN servers are characterized by low hardware demands and tremendous performance. They are more economical and reduce the hardware load at the data center. Thanks to advanced distributed caching, the server doesn’t need to query the data center for data it doesn’t have in its memory, but rather tries to retrieve it primarily from sister CDN servers.  Data from the data center is only sent once and can then be distributed horizontally. This reduces transmission costs, improves data center performance, and content also reaches users more quickly.

Dynamic rebalancing proxy

The efficient management of streamed data is very demanding, because it changes over time, and it is not always cheaper to move it closer to the user’s location. If, for example, the user is the first to start watching specific content, then since no server has the corresponding data in its memory it is better to move the user to one of the CDN servers located directly in the data center. As soon as the number of users who want to consume the content reaches a certain limit, it is better to move them to the given location. The dynamic rebalancing proxy, which is part of the client applications, receives information for CDN streaming servers and is able, while operating, to move users from one server to another. This process managed by the streaming controller does not affect the video player at all and the video therefore does not need to be reloaded. Thanks to this, it is possible to decommission a server by moving clients to another server. Another advantage is that the user doesn’t notice any of these changes.

The fast and effective distribution of content along with a new form of aggregation, referral and interaction with the content being watched is the future that will soon be tested.

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