Be a Smooth (CDN) Operator

W.L. Dudink, Product Specialist – Media DeliveryApril 3rd 2013, Paris - France

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Agenda

The Challenge

The Role of a CDN

Operator CDN Demand

Whats Next?

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Company Overview

$6.3 billion revenue and more than 10,000

employees

Serving customers in more than 45 countries

Facilities-based provider with 165,000 route

miles of fiber network connecting multiple

continents

Transporting over 6.5 TB of billable traffic

across an IP backbone

Delivering global data, voice, video, and

managed solutions for business, content,

government and wholesale customers

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An End-to-End Global Network

Global Reach

Owned fiber networks with reach to North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region

Connected by extensive undersea facilities

Services reaching 5 continents

Core Network

More than 500 network markets

~170 metro markets

~100,000 intercity miles

~30,000 metro route miles

~35,000 subsea route miles

More than 340 Multi-tenant Data Center facilities worldwide

Bringing the world closer together

The Challenge

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Business Challenges

It’s difficult to piece together an online solution that addresses all of my

business needs

You know your business — preset packages don’t offer solutions you need

Individual services through different vendors are complex and costly

I need my content delivery optimized and performing better than my

competitors

Will network will go down with extreme traffic spikes, multiple media formats, or

attempts of attack?

My website needs to be running faster and my content needs to be relevant

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Challenge 1: Finding a Provider to Solve All of Your

Business Needs

Your business is unique, and so are your requirements

You don’t just need a CDN, you need services from start to finish through a

single provider

Prepackaged offerings don’t seem to meet all of your needs

You want to simplify workflow and remove unnecessary vendors and middle men

I have a

question

about my

web site.

We can’t help you.

Call your CDN provider.

Please hold while

I track this down…

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Challenge 2: Content Delivery that Outperforms Your

Competitors

Content consumption is growing exponentially — it’s difficult to keep up

Multiple Platforms, Vendors and

Content Types

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A Bigger Challenge to Deliver Content

It has become more difficult to provide consistent quality delivery of content

Larger files

Longer video duration

Higher quality content

Metric 2006 2009 2011

Average U.S.

Bitrate768 Kbps 4.7 Mbps 5.3 Mbps

Typical Video Rate 300 Kbps (LQ) 1.5 Mbps (SD)3.8 Mbps

(HD)

Average File Size < 1 GB 1.5 GB 3 GB

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High-Quality Content Delivery is Not Optional

Performance is a must

Consumer expectation has grown: long download times or pauses in live viewing

are no longer acceptable

Customer satisfaction and loyalty depends on content performance

Downtime is often a newsworthy, devastating event

Expanding customer base

Information is not shared in a bubble, it is now expected to spread on an

international level

You have more places to reach, and those customers expect instant delivery

Growing traffic

Traffic spikes on popular content are sudden and extreme

Whether high peak traffic numbers are expected or not, end users expect your

network to deliver their content

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The Solution

You need a CDN ?

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Performance

AvailabilitySecurity

Scalability Offload

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Challenges to enter the CDN market

Domain Expertise: How do we develop the knowledge base to operate a CDN

and support it for the long-term?

Technology Infrastructure: Is our infrastructure scale-tested for speed, load,

reliability and reach to meet changing customer needs?

Value-Added Services: What kind of new services can we offer to generate

additional revenue streams?

Time to Market: Can we avoid long development cycles and yet still offer

bulletproof services as soon as possible?

Long-term Costs: Can we avoid high costs operational management of our

CDN while our revenues ramp?

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The Role of a CDN

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Content is more than Audio & Video

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Content is more than Audio & Video

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What's the primary issue a CDN addresses?

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Spread the load!• Get content closer

to the audience

A central point serving a vast audience…• Reaching critical mass• Single point of failure• Poor audience

experience

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How does a CDN work?

Put Content into the CDN

Users requests content

CDN gets content where needed

CDN delivers content

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Storage

Question Answer

What is it? External File Storage

o Origin Storage

o Cloud Storage

Value

Provided?

Lower cost and reliable solution for

large-scale storage requirementso Redundancy

o Offload CapEx + OpEx

Adhere to geographic license policies

Added Features (Management, Reporting, etc.)

What

content is

supported?

Pre-Recorded

Audio & Video

Graphics

Software

Documents

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Download & Progressive Download

Question Answer

What is it?

Delivering Physical Fileso Caching

o Caching & Download

o HTTP Download

Value

Provided?

Lower-cost & reliable solution

for wide-spread deliverieso Redundancy

o Global Reach

o Offload CapEx + OpEx

Added Features (Management, Reporting, Security, etc.)

What

content is

supported?

Pre-Recorded

Audio & Video

Graphics

Software

Documents

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Streaming

Question Answer

What is it?

Broadcasting Audio & Video Streamso Windows Media

o Adobe Flash

o Adobe Zeri

o Microsoft Smooth

o Apple QuickTime

Value

Provided?

Lower-cost & reliable solution

for wide-spread deliverieso Redundancy

o Global Reach

o Offload CapEx + OpEx

Added Features (Management, Reporting, Security, etc.)

What

content is

supported?

Pre-Recorded

Audio & Video

Live Broadcast

Audio & Video

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What else?

Reporting

Monitor CDN activities

Measure effectiveness andReach

Obtain raw data for additionalprocessing

Security

Prevent or enable deliveries to specific geographies

Ensure requests are valid

Secure the connection

Traffic Management

Encoding / Transcoding

Front End Optimization

Mobile Delivery

Fundamental Services ?

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What else?

Warming The Cache

Draining The Cache

Flipping Servers

Binding Servers

Mid-Tier Servers

Ingest Point

Publishing Point

Traffic Shedding

Content Invalidations

Adaptive Bitrate / Variable Bitrate / Smooth Streaming

Talk the talk...

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Operator CDN Demand

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Do you really need a CDN ?

A CDN lets you store, distribute and deliver on-net premium content, whether

this is for IPTV, OTT, web or mobile content. You don’t need a transparent

caching platform for this purpose.

A CDN lets you store, distribute and deliver off-net premium content. You can

monetize the CDN by renting its capacity to third party content owners. You

don’t need a transparent caching platform for this purpose.

Both a CDN and transparent caching let you offload traffic from the Internet. By

deploying edge nodes in strategically locations, you can offload traffic from

transit and peering links and your backbone.

Transparent caching saves money. CDNs save money and make money.

―Transparent caching OR CDN‖ vs ―Transparant Caching AND CDN‖

Transparent Internet Caching (TIC) vs Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

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Do you really need a CDN?

The use cases and The Choice

Add CDN services and expand the

product portfolio with products that

are adjacent to services already

offered on the network, thereby

increasing revenue.

You have ―eyeballs‖ and concerned

with the volume of traffic being

delivered over the network. Hence,

trying to control costs, and improve

quality.

Develop – Build a CDN from

scratch. High Risk, High Costs and

a long Time To Market.

Partner – Work with a provider for

building your CDN needs:

Basic Overlay

On-Net Edge

Managed CDN

Interconnected CDN

Federated CDN

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Partner Choices

Interconnecting CDNs

CDN Overlay

Content can be pulled in or cached on a number of CDNs

Load balancing over multiple CDNs

Offered by companies such as Cedexis, Conviva..

On-Net Edge

Deployment of Edge servers in the operators network

Lowers Transit costs and off loads peering connections

Offered by companies such as Google

Interconnected CDNs

Licensed CDN

Managed CDN

Federated CDN

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Interconnecting CDNs

Licensed CDN

Software based services

Deployed and installed by the provider

Maintained and managed by the operator

Stand alone or interconnected

Managed CDN

Software and/or hardware based services

Deployed, installed, maintained and managed by the provider

Opportunity for revenue sharing models or additional services

Interconnected with global CDN

Carrier based CDN

Offered by hardware vendors

Not actually building a CDN, so DIY!

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Interconnecting CDNs

CDN Federation

Standards in development with ETSI and IETF

True federation is not about APIs and technology, but more about the business, the

models, the SLAs

Possible scenario’s

Regionally between telco/operator CDNs

• Most local content stays local.

• No real need!

Global to regional CDN

• Small amount of traffic from local to global

• Global CDN traffic pushed to local

• There is a need, but depends on the business model.

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Whats next ?

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Considerations

Building a global, reliable, at-scale CDN with effective peering relationships is

very difficult, time consuming, expensive to build and complicated to manage

There are already a lot of competitors in the industry and 2 dominant providers

with established, proven technology

There are countless examples of network owners/operators/aggregators trying

to build out their own CDN – only to discover that building it and running it are

two different things

Some additional points to think about

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Resolving Concerns

Technology: proven, scale-tested CDN software and technology

Expertise: knowledgeable, industry veterans, skilled at getting you up and

running quickly

Management: a clear path for managing the services

Expanded Network: agreement that allows the customer the use of an

already existing global CDN to extend the reach of the customers own CDN

network where applicable

Time-to-Market: field tested processes and methodologies for a high quality

and timely implementation

Value Added Services: complimentary services designed to increase

revenue, margin, and differentiation

The ideal Solution provides...

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TOP-PERFORMING SOLUTIONS:

HIGH-QUALITY CONSUMER EXPERIENCE

Network Scale High Speed Delivery

Reliability Analytics

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A COMMITTED TEAM OF

BROADCAST AND CONTENT

DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS TO

HELP YOU PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:

SUPPORTING YOUR SUCCESS

Consultation Enhanced Support

Network & Application Tuning

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“WE RELY ON LEVEL 3 AS A TRUSTED CDN PARTNER, AND WE’VE BEEN TRULY IMPRESSED

WITH THE QUALITY OF THEIR VIDEO DELIVERY SERVICES, AS WELL AS THE LEVEL OF

RESPONSIVENESS AND EXPERTISE WE ARE GETTING FROM THEIR TEAM. THEY’VE BEEN

THERE WITH US EVERY STEP OF THE WAY AS WE’VE DEVELOPED THIS NEW OFFERING, AND

WE’RE CONFIDENT IN THEIR ABILITY TO ENABLE HBO’S DELIVERY OF A PREMIUM MOBILE

VIEWING EXPERIENCE FOR OUR SUBSCRIBERS.”

— GREG FITTINGHOFF, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF CORPORATE SYSTEMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE, HBO

“IN CHOOSING LEVEL 3 FOR ONE OF OUR CDN SERVICES, WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE

OPTIMAL CDN REDUNDANCY AND PERFORMANCE DIVERSITY, ENABLING US TO PROVIDE A

HIGHER QUALITY AND MORE RELIABLE ONLINE EXPERIENCE FOR BASEBALL FANS.”

— JOE CHOTI, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MLB.COM

Our service organization understands your

business and is passionate about your success.

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Thank You !

Wilfried.dudink@level3.com

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