Prefetcher with adaptive stream segment prefetch window based on client associated thresholds
Active Publication Date: 2018-12-06
EDGIO INC
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- Application Information
AI Technical Summary
Benefits of technology
The patent describes an adaptive prefetcher that improves the delivery of media content streams to clients without uniformly caching or prefetching segments of different streams. The prefetcher uses adaptive triggering and a prefetch window to determine which segments to prefetch and cache in advance of a client request. By dynamically enabling and disabling segment caching and adjusting the prefetch window based on real-time demand, the prefetcher optimizes bandwidth usage and reduces latency and buffering issues. The technical effect of the adaptive prefetcher is improved streaming experience for clients.
Problems solved by technology
Providing an uninterrupted streaming experience is technically challenging because of the time sensitive manner with which the client-server exchange for segment delivery occurs.
Any delay in the server response to a requested segment can result in interrupted playback or buffering at the client.
This and other factors beyond server control, including network congestion, can disrupt the end user experience and ultimately cause the client to cease playback.
Local caching becomes more impractical as the stream length or duration increases.
Streams that are several minutes long and encoded with different bitrates can consume gigabytes worth of cache.
The server may have insufficient memory for caching such large content or may not want to dedicate a large portion of memory to caching of a single stream, especially in a multi-tenant environment in which the server is tasked with serving other streams or content.
Moreover, server performance would be adversely affected as other popular content or streams would be ejected from cache, causing the server to re-retrieve that content from remote storage in order to respond to received client requests.
Locally caching is also wasteful when treating all streams or media content the same.
In particular, cache resources would be wasted when consumed with a stream that is requested by one or a few clients.
Prefetching is also wasteful when treating all streams or media content the same.
In particular, bandwidth is wasted in unnecessarily prefetching segments for a particular stream when there is a single or limited number of clients watching the stream and those clients prematurely end playback, switch to a different stream, or switch to a different bitrate encoding of the stream, and thereby never request the prefetched segments.
In addition to wasted bandwidth, uniform prefetching also wastes caching resources as prefetched segments that are never requested simply sit and consume cache at the expense of other popular content that can be more efficiently served if in cache.
Method used
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Embodiment Construction
[0014]Disclosed are systems and methods for an adaptive prefetcher. The adaptive prefetcher is a stream segment prefetcher with adaptive triggering and an adaptive prefetch window, wherein the prefetch window sets the number of segments to prefetch and cache ahead of a client request for a particular segment of a stream. The adaptive prefetcher modifies its prefetching operations for different media content streams based on conditions associated with each stream at prefetch time. More specifically, the adaptive prefetcher modifies its prefetching operations by dynamically enabling and disabling segment caching for different streams based on real-time or current demand for those streams. The adaptive prefetcher also modifies it prefetch operations by dynamically increasing or decreasing the segment prefetch window for different streams based on real-time or current demand for those streams.
[0015]In some embodiments, the adaptive prefetcher's caching and prefetching operations are ada...
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An adaptive stream segment prefetcher changes the number of segments it prefetches following a client requested segment of the same stream based on conditions associated with that stream at prefetch time. The adaptive prefetcher increases or decreases the number of segments to prefetch for a particular stream based on the number of active or concurrent clients requesting that particular stream, based on the playback duration of the particular stream by one or more clients, or some combination of both. The adaptive prefetcher continuously monitors the conditions associated with the stream such that number of segments prefetched at a first time are greater or less than the number of segments prefetched at a later second time.
Description
BACKGROUND ART[0001]Media content represents images, video, audio, text, presentations, and other digital content that span some duration. The media content is streamed over a digital network, such as the Internet, to different network enabled clients (e.g., computers, tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, etc.) by encoding the media content as a set of segments and performing a serialized delivery of the segments to the clients with each segment representing a short duration of the overall stream. The segmented encoding and delivery of the media content allows clients to start, resume, or skip to a particular playback position by simply requesting the segment corresponding to that particular position. The segmented encoding further allows clients to immediately switch between different encodings of the same media stream, wherein the different encodings provide the media stream at different bitrates or quality levels.[0002]Providing an uninterrupted streaming experience is technicall...
Claims
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Patent Timeline
Login to View More IPC IPC(8): H04N21/231H04N21/239H04N21/2183
CPCH04N21/23106H04N21/2393H04L67/2847G06F12/0862G06F12/0215H04N21/2183H04N21/2408H04N21/8456G06F2212/1021G06F2212/6026H04L67/5681
InventorPATIL, RAVIKIRAN
OwnerEDGIO INC