Low latency cacheable media streaming

Abstract

A low latency streaming system provides a stateless protocol between a client and server with reduced latency. The server embeds incremental information in media fragments that eliminates the usage of a typical control channel. In addition, the server provides uniform media fragment responses to media fragment requests, thereby allowing existing Internet cache infrastructure to cache streaming media data. Each fragment has a distinguished Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that allows the fragment to be identified and cached by both Internet cache servers and the client's browser cache. The system reduces latency using various techniques, such as sending fragments that contain less than a full group of pictures (GOP), encoding media without dependencies on subsequent frames, and by allowing clients to request subsequent frames with only information about previous frames.

Description

Background technique [0001] Streaming media is multimedia that is continuously received by and typically presented to an end user (using a client) while being delivered by a streaming provider (using a server). One problem with existing media streaming architectures is the tight coupling between servers and clients. Stateful connections between clients and servers create additional server overhead because the server keeps track of each client's current state. This also limits the scalability of the server. In addition, the client cannot quickly react to changing conditions such as: increased packet loss; reduced bandwidth; users requesting different content or modifying existing content (such as speeding up or rewinding), etc., without first communicating with The server communicates and waits for the server to adapt and respond. Often when a client reports lower available bandwidth, the server does not adapt quickly enough, causing the user on the client to notice when pac...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Each of these delays contributes to the latency between the time of the live event and the time the client is able to view the live event

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