Multicast has promised to solve the scale issue of delivering very popular television over the internet for a long time. In this session, speakers presented the first paper from BT Research, both a proof-of-concept architecture and field trial results are presented for a means to assist unicast delivery using multicast, plus two supporting papers. This session took place at IBC2023 on Saturday 16 September. These four papers are available to download via the links below.

The paper addresses the challenges and needs arising from the requirement to support multiple different content service providers and their end client devices. Our second paper from Brightcove, builds on the recent addition of content steering into HLS and MPEG DASH (which enables dynamic routing of streaming content between different CDNs). This requires content steering servers and the challenge is how to implement them robustly and at scale. This paper discusses those challenges, presents a solution and an open-source project for validation and trial implementation. This session also has two supporting papers; the University of Surrey has very effectively used machine learning to expedite “elephant flow” detection within the network, enabling re-routing of this traffic to minimise latency induced congestion. The other is an investigation by Comcast into an emerging transport protocol, Media over QUIC, offering traffic prioritization and low latencies, without the typical short-comings of TCP-IP. Interesting experimental results are provided.

Speakers: 

Steve Appleby, Senior Manager, Research, Video Delivery - BT

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Steve Appleby

Steve Appleby has worked on a wide range of research topics over a number of years, including Ground Probing radar to find cables and pipes in the ground, Signal Processing for anomaly detection in networks, Distributed Artificial Intelligence for resilient network management, Human Geography, investigating human population settlement patterns with a view to distribution network planning, Automated language Learning for Machine Translation and most recently media delivery technology.  

Steve has been awarded two medals from the British Computer Society (Mobile Agents for network management and Equitable Quality video streaming). During the course of his research, Steve has filed around 50 patents. 

Steve currently leads a team in the Networks Research unit at BT which addresses all aspects of media delivery over fixed and mobile networks. The team’s work areas include cost-effective distribution of video for large-scale, live events and maximising the quality of experience for end users. One particular area of interest is the use of multicast to help achieve scalability. This has included the use of 5G MBS for efficient delivery of live streams (leading a workpackage in the 5G-XCAST project and on the advisory board of the Fudge-5G project) as well as the use of Multicast ABR technology on the fixed broadband network. Another specific area of research is been low-latency streaming, moving to match, or improve on, the latencies achieved by over-air broadcast. 

Yuriy Reznik, VP, Research - Brightcove, Inc.

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Yuriy Reznik

Yuriy Reznik is a Technology Fellow and Vice President of Research at Brightcove, Inc. Previously, he held engineering and management positions at InterDigital, Inc. (2011-2016), Qualcomm Inc. (2005-2011), and RealNetworks, Inc. (1998-2005). In 2008 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Information Systems Laboratory at Stanford University. Since 2001 he was also involved in the work of ITU-T SG16 and MPEG standards committees and made contributions to several multimedia coding and delivery standards, including ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, MPEG-4 ALS, ITU-T G.718, ITU-T H.265 / MPEG HEVC, and MPEG DASH. 

Several technologies, standards, and products that Yuriy Reznik has helped to develop (RealAudio / RealVideo, ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, Zencoder, Brightcove CAE, and MPEG-DASH) have been recognized by the NATAS Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards. 

Yuriy Reznik holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Kyiv University. He is a senior member of IEEE, a senior member of SPIE, and a member of the ACM, AES, and SMPTE. He is a co-author of over 150 conference and journal papers, and co-inventor of over 70 granted US patents. 

Moderator: 

Darren Fawcett, VP Hardware and Systems Engineering - CommScope

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Darren Fawcett

Darren leads the Home Networks’ System Engineering and Hardware team, with responsibility for broadband and video solutions for service provider customers. His team is focused on the architecture and delivery of robust and secure solutions into the video and broadband service market.

Based in the UK, he has over 25 years of experience working within the communication technology sector, having worked previously for Datong, GEC Plessey Telecommunication and Pace. Darren has a broad knowledge of technology, with commercial results – being responsible for innovative product development and launches in the field of wireless, broadband and streaming products.

Darren holds a BEng in Electronic Engineering from the University of York and a Master of Science in Communication Engineering from the University of Leeds.

Access and download the papers:

IBC2023 Tech Papers: Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery

IBC2023 Tech Papers: Implementing HLS/DASH Content Steering at Scale

IBC2023 Tech Papers: Improving the Broadcast Viewer Experience Through Rapid and Early Elephant Flow Detection by Machine Learning

IBC2023 Tech Papers: A Fresh Look at Live Sports Streaming with Prioritized Media-Over-QUIC Transport