Content Streaming Redundancy via Excess Processing Capacity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing content delivery systems face challenges in providing reliable and high-quality streaming media due to issues like packet drops, hardware/software errors, and connectivity issues, often requiring complete redundancy and retry processes that increase latency.
Innovation Solution
A content delivery system with multiple ingress and distribution sites that utilize excess processing capacity and parallel processing to provide redundancy without complete device redundancy, enabling real-time failover and reducing latency by using cached and buffered content to maintain seamless delivery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If complete redundancy of devices is implemented to ensure reliable content delivery, then reliability is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements multi-functionality by enabling content distribution sites to serve multiple content sources and multiple geographic regions simultaneously. Each distribution site is configured with excess processing capacity that can be dynamically allocated to handle failures from any source or region, eliminating the need for dedicated backup devices for each source while maintaining system reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs dynamic resource allocation where processing capacity at distribution sites can be dynamically adjusted based on real-time failure conditions. When a content source fails, the system dynamically redirects content to alternative sources and reallocates processing resources accordingly, allowing the same infrastructure to provide redundancy without static dedicated backup devices.
2Reliability
If retry processes are implemented to handle delivery errors, then reliability is improved, but latency increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-positioning content at multiple distribution sites with excess processing capacity before failures occur. When a failure is detected, the system can immediately switch to alternative pre-configured sources without waiting for retry processes to complete, thereby reducing latency while maintaining reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates copies of content at multiple distribution sites simultaneously with the original source. This copying approach allows the system to switch to replica content immediately upon failure detection, avoiding the need to wait for re-encoding or re-transmission processes that would increase latency.
3Reliability
If dedicated backup devices are deployed for each content source, then reliability is improved, but processing resources are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements multi-functionality by enabling content distribution sites to serve multiple content sources and multiple geographic regions simultaneously. Each distribution site is configured with excess processing capacity that can be dynamically allocated to handle failures from any source or region, eliminating the need for dedicated backup devices for each source while maintaining system reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically discards unused processing capacity from distribution sites that are not currently handling failures, and recovers this capacity for normal content delivery operations. This allows the system to maintain reliability through shared redundancy while avoiding continuous consumption of processing resources by dedicated backup infrastructure.
Data Source
AI summary
A system can include multiple content ingress sites to process content into portions of content. A content ingress site, of the multiple content ingress sites, can include a first set of devices. The first set of devices can be configured to process the content in a synchronized manner. The first set of devices can be configured to have excess processing capacity to facilitate failover of a first segmenter device to a second segmenter device. The first set of devices can be configured to process content from multiple sources. The system can include multiple content distribution sites to encode the portions of content. A content distribution site can include a second set of devices. The system can include multiple content satellite offices to provide the portions of content to one or more destination devices. A content satellite office can include a third set of devices.