True Live OTTSynchronized, Low Latency Solution Paper

LIVE IS WHAT YOU MAKE ITWith millions of free videos online, viewers are spoiled for choice. But the more content viewers have to choose from, the less each piece is worth. Live content is the exception. When something’s live, it’s an expe-rience people can be part of. Live sports in particular bring people together – same time, different place.

They don’t want to miss a second – and this makes it an advertiser’s dream: stadium signage, naming rights, product placements and ads the audience will happily sit through. Let’s face it, they can’t fast-forward them.

Live content holds commercial value – for exam-ple people will pay to watch a live boxing match. In contrast, the amount of free things to watch on the In-ternet is quickly eroding the value of non-live content. Live content is also the glue that holds bundled cable

subscriptions together. Just compare the monthly price with and without the sports channels to see the value that audiences place on live sports events.

When people share an experience, it can become a social phenomenon:

• Super Bowl: 50 - 200 million Facebook interactions • 2015 Champions League Fina:l 834+ million Twitter impressions.

It’s not just live sports either; breaking news and social media go hand-in-hand. It’s not even limited to real-time live. Some TV shows also generate over half a million tweets per episode. Social interaction is a growing part of entertainment that lets viewers share the experience – unless they’re watching OTT.

SPOILING THE MOMENTWhen people watch live events on traditional OTT plat-forms, the action they see varies from screen to screen. Nothing spoils the moment like finding out about a score 30 seconds before you get to see it. As a result, people are forced to log out of social platforms or risk hearing what’s happening on someone else’s screen before it happens on theirs. With our solution, social interaction is embraced and the potential for broader engagement is encouraged.

SYE - A TRUE LIVE OTT CDN SOLUTION

SYE, A TRUE LIVE OTT CDN SLUTIONA true live OTT solution includes ultra-low latency streaming as well as functionality to synchronize the individual feeds across devices throughout the entire experience. True live OTT brings a TV- like viewing experience to anyone regardless of platform, including features such as; instant playback; fast channel changes; seamless ad-insertion; and higher quality.

LOWEST OVERHEAD AND BEST QoS Sye is built around a resilient streaming protocol crafted from the ground up. It is optimized for live streaming, with minimum overhead and maximum network utilization. Compared to traditional OTT streaming solutions. Sye maintains more than 40% higher video quality compared to file based solutions. In comparison, HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) introduces more than three times overhead and more than four times the return traffic, suffering especially in handheld environments and overstraining the last mile with superfluous data.

CENTRALIZED PRESENCE, GLOBAL REACHWith an optimized protocol, Sye’s tolerance for packet loss, round trip delays, jitter, and geographical distance is significantly higher than traditional OTT streaming solutions. Long fat pipe problems are non-existent, opening up the potential for a CDN infrastructure with fewer edge nodes supporting larger geographical areas.

EXCEPTIONAL QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE Sye includes a refined adaptive bitrate technology that is “state-aware” of the client’s available bandwidth. This stateful ABR continuously keeps track of each client’s available bandwidth, providing the highest possible picture quality at any given time. As a result, Sye improves the customer experiences in two ways; it maintains the highest possible ABR profile longer; and it eliminates the “sinus curve” behavior when switching between different streams, resulting in a TV-like channel-switching experience.

A SEAMLESS TV EXPERIENCE With a fixed, but configurable ultra-low delay, all devices receive the same content at the same time. Be faster than the normal broadcast or add individual OTT delay to harmonize with your viewer’s local TV service provider.

IMMERSIVE AND SOCIAL LIVE APPLICATIONS Millenials don’t want to be broadcast at. They expect an engaging, immersive experience, enabled by the interactive nature of the second screen, their first screen. With Sye you can give your customers full control over the OTT experience, opening up opportunities for multi-camera, multi-view applications where viewers can choose their favorite athlete, race car, or camera angle. Live. In Sync.

The rise of Over-The-Top (OTT) video has shaken established business models and created completely new ones. Until now, it’s main limitations have been lack of latency and synchronization. Traditional OTT solutions are created for the on-demand experience, relying on buffering to maintain a high Quality of Experience (QoE). File-based workflows introduce variablea latency, ranging from seconds to minutes, increasing over time. This results in a lack of sync between individual OTT devices as well as a delayed experience compared to the linear broadcast. It’s no problem for viewers binge-watching on-demand content, but it kills the potential of live content.

TRUE LIVE

• Synchronized audio, video and data across devices • Ultra-low latency, faster than TV • Low-latency, harmonize with the linear broadcast • A TV-like experience. Instant channel switching • Higher throughput with lower overhead

STREAMING SERVICES

The Sye Streaming Protocol is utilized throughout the entire solution, from the ingress, fanout, egress, all the way to the client. Necessary parameters are applied to accommodate different needs of the streaming functions in the Sye CDN, making sure that the highest possible quality live stream is maintained at any given moment.

The Sye Streaming Protocol is unicast based,

as the Internet does not route IP multicast, for on-premises deployments, IP multicast can be supported.

Latency is a global parameter set at the ingress, with options to add client latency for harmonization at different stages. To minimize overhead, the ingress extracts media samples from the incoming stream, wraps it in the Sye Streaming protocol, and injects necessary sync

data, the actual media bitstream is left intact.

ENCRYPTION AND DRMThe Ingress function provides built-in content payload encryption using standard AES-128 symmetric-key algorithm. Alternatively, external 3rd party DRM can be integrated via the Sye DRM API both on server and client side.

Sye is a virtualized software solution with a massively scalable and robust back-end, built to support large scale live events and linear services. The solution can be deployed over private, public or hybrid clouds, existing side-by-side with your on-demand service. The solution contains an end-to-end service that includes: streaming, control, and orchestration in the backend; to client SDKs to be integrated into existing apps for playback.

SYE STREAMING SERVICES: handles distributed streaming and includes ingress, fanout (optional for point-to-multipoint replication) and egress functionality (client-facing streaming server handles resilient streaming and ABR).

SYE CONTROL SERVICES: includes configuration, provisioning, logging, alarms, and metrics -all easily monitored through the Control dashboard or APIs.

INGRESS FANOUTTRANSCODER EGRESS

Different ABR levels are created in the transcoder (not part of the Sye CDN), picked up by the ingress and maintained all the way to the egress. The egress sends an adaptive stream to the Sye client.

SYE OVERVIEW

STREAMING SERVICES

CONTROL SERVICES

INGRESS FANOUT

SERVICE ORCHESTRION

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

FRONT-END

TRANSCODER

LOAD BALANCER

BACK-OFFICEINTEGRATION

SERVICES

RESOURCEMANAGEMENT

SYE CLIENTS

CUSTOMERRESPONSIBILITY

INGRESS

STREAMING• MPEG-2 TS/UDP

• SMPTE 2022-1/2

• Sye streaming protocol

NETWORK• Unicast

• IP Multicast

STREAM REQUIREMENTS • Fixed GOP

• Closed GOP

• Progressive scan

• ADTS framing

• A/V interleave delay +-1000ms

(ideally zero)

• ABR aligned IDR’s

• Non-segmented streams

CODECS • HEVC

• H.264

• AAC-LC, HE-AAC

FANOUT

The Ingress function is the media ingest point of the Sye Live OTT system. Sye ingests content directly from an encoder or transcoder, un-packaged and un-encrypted, i.e. before the segmenter. Note, the Sye solution does not include an encoder/transcoder. Typically it is hosted by the customer (on premises) or in the cloud (as a service).

The ingress function is agnostic to resolutions and bitrates, number of ABR profiles and number of video and audio tracks per stream. The limiting factor is ultimately the client device capabilities. The ingress function also supports the Sye Streaming Protocol as input, meaning ingress-to-ingress deployment models are supported. This is very useful in cloud deployments as an example, providing resilient streaming contribution from the source into the cloud while preserving sync.

MEDIA INGEST TYPES

The Fanout function is a point-to-multi point replicator for conserving bandwidth in the core network, especially useful in the long-distance legs. It serves clusters of egress services, i.e. fanout-to-egress’ or other fanout services in serial mode, i.e. fanout-to-fanout without affecting the end-to-end latency. Note, it will affect the latency budget, chipping of up to 100mS for each fanout level.

In a scenario of 100 channels with aggregated bitrate of 10Mbps per channel for all ABR profiles, 1Gbps is sent per cluster of egress’, instead of 1Gbps per egress service.

Example Fan-out minimum requirement: 2 threads, 1Gb network, 8GB RAM, Intel E-5 class of CPU type

INGRESS

FANOUT

EGRESS

EGRESS

FANOUT FANOUT

EGRESS

EGRESS

FANOUT

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESSThe Egress service is an optimized streaming engine providing the clients with adaptive bit-rate streaming. In favorable conditions, it performs with 95% utilization of available network I/O, but even in public cloud environments using generic instances, such as AWS, 67% utilization is achieved. The Egress function uses the global latency setting to provide highly resilient streaming. Each lost packet can be recovered multiple times if needed, always providing error-free video, even in very poor network conditions, i.e. up to 10-15% packet-loss.

Since the Sye Streaming Protocol is UDP-based, distance, round trip delay, RTT, has no impact on the throughput. This can be compared to TCP-based legacy streaming solution which has direct throughput impact by increase in RTT and packet-loss. Doubling RTT in a TCP streaming solution results in half the throughput.

Example Egress minimum requirement: 8 threads, 10Gb network, 16GB RAM, Intel E-5 class of CPU type

The Service Orchestration manages all back-end functions in the Sye system. A web-based user interface is available and includes a dashboard to facilitate the operations of the system.

All communication between the Control Services and connected functions are protected by TLS communication security.

Sye Control Services consists of Service Orchestration and Resource Management.

SERVICE ORCHESTRATION

CONTROL SERVICES

CONTROL SERVICES

SERVICE ORCHESTRION

FRONT-END

LOAD BALANCER

BACK-OFFICEINTEGRATION

SERVICES

RESOURCE MANAGER

Sye UDP

CONFIGURATION OF• Streaming Services• Streaming services groups• Sources• Channels and events• Latency• Failover mode

• Service provider, sub-service provider

• Integration end-points

SERVICE DISCOVERY • Software provisioning• Dynamic re-configuration• Service registration• State changes

LOGGING • Services • Instances (1:1 mapping services/containers)• Severity • Object • Timing

ALARMS• Ingress bitrate too low• Ingress discontinuity• Ingress pts difference too high

• Lost packets in internal streaming• Inconsistent config• Service instance is not running stable• Cannot fetch image for service instance• An unexpected error occurred• CPU usage above threshold• Disk usage above 75%• Disk usage above 90%• Time not synchronized to any peer• Machine is not running stable• Reduced redundancy• No redundancy• Service down• Channel failure

METRICSInput• Bitrate• Codec• IDR interval• GOP-size• Audio/Video interleave delay• PTS difference• And more...

Streams for one egress, one location or entire network• Active streams

• Total transmitted bytes• Lost packets• retransmitted packets• New streams per minute• Stopped streams per minute• Failed streams per minute• Failed-to-start streams per minute• Denied streams• ABR bitrate changes per minute• Min / max /average round-trip delay• Etc…

Data for one channel• Average number of viewers per minute• Total transmitted bytes• Etc…

Streams for one customer• Channel id• Duration• Number of bitrate changes• Average bitrate• Min, max, average round-trip delay• Lost packets• Retransmitted packets• Sent packets• And more

DEFINED ROLES:

Content Provider• Provides content and rights to service providers

Network Provider• Operates the Sye system

Service Provider • Provides a Live OTT service to end-users directly or via a sub-

service provider.

Sub-Service Provider• Resells a service from the service provider to end-users

End-User• Consumer of the Live OTT service

Usage data and statistics are segmented per role and used as billing records for example. The Sye Live OTT solution does not handle subscriber data and will instead be integrated to an existing back-office system handling subscriber management. Channels are tied to sub-service providers and associated service provider. Trying to reach a channel outside the service provider mappings, renders in a NACK.

HTTPS LOAD BALANCER A HTTPS proxy is required to load-balance the resource requests from each client to the Resource Manager. The solution includes a HTTPS load-balancer, but an existing load-balancer can be re-used as well.

FRONT-ENDThe Front-end service manages system wide streaming load-balancing and failover functionality. The Front-end is a service, handling client requests, directing them to the most optimal Egress. For large systems the frontend selects Egress service from a pool of

egress services using a random round-robin schema to distribute the load evenly.

INTEGRATION SERVICES The Integrations service handles client authentications through an external north-bound API by forwarding opaque credentials, originating from the app passed via the Sye Client. The Integration service also resolves the device location through an external API by asking a network management system, NMS or geo-location service from the Service provider’s back-office.

The resource management contains 3 different services, HTTPS load balancer, Front-end and integration services.

The solution supports logical partitioning, i.e. multi-tenancy, one system serving multiple customer roles.

SERVICE ORCHESTRATION INCLUDES: All services includes public APIs

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

MULTI TENANCY

The Sye client SDK integrates into existing apps for live or event types of services. With the SDK you are able to develop all-new UI and UX for new types of interactive and social video services supporting a shareable viewing experience.

• Instant channel changes (enabled through the enhanced ABR switching)

• Instant playback• Multiple independent streams in sync• Metadata sync• Seamless channel swipe• Nudging function to add individual latency per device in order to

sync with main Broadcast feed on the big screen.• Filter out selection of ABR-profiles, useful when addressing

diverse

With the Sye Client SDK it is possible to use functions such as scale, crop, rotate, use transparency, or manipulate each individual stream.

The SDK also offers the ability to auto-adjust the ABR profile level to fit the size of the video window, making sure that you always optimize

the use of available bandwidth, guaranteeing the highest possible Quality of Experience.

SYNCHRONIZED METADATA Out-of-band metadata synchronization enables app developers to synch metadata with the media using a time reference handover from the SDK. Elevate your content by including metadata such as stats, odds or notifications.

The Sye Client SDK supports current and previous versions of: iOS, Android and tvOS

The SDK includes three main functions:• Networking with resilience• Decoding and decryption• Rendering

Included in the SDK are documentation, example code and a simplified reference application. The SDK is pre-integrated with 3rd party DRM.

CLOSED CAPTION SUPPORT Full support for CEA-608 and relevant subset of CEA-708.

SESSION SETUP

When a client requests to receive a stream, the system selects a suitable Egress server that can deliver the video stream. The client starts by resolving the hostname of the HTTPS load balancer. The client selects HTTPS Load Balancers using a random round-robin selection of pre-provisioned list. If the first selection fail, another HTTPS Load Balancer is selected. The client then makes a HTTPS-request for a stream allocation to the HTTPS Load Balancers. The HTTPS Load Balancer is a standard HTTPS-proxy and it forwards the request to one of the Front-ends.

The Front-ends keep track on which Egress servers that exist and their load. When the Front-end receives the request from the client, it checks if the client is allowed to receive the requested stream by validating authentication information from the back-office though the integration service. The request is then forwarded to an Egress server that has capacity to handle at least one more stream. The Front-end selects streaming functions using a random round-robin schema in order to distribute the load.

The Egress server generates a secret and sets up its streaming engine to send the requested stream to a client that presents that secret. A response is returned containing the secret to the Front-end. The Front-end returns the response to the HTTPS Load Balancer, which returns it to the client. The client can now use the response to contact the Egress directly and ask it to start streaming the requested stream. By doing so, the NAT-function in the end-uses home gateway opens a port in the firewall from the inside to outside.

RESOURCE REQUESTS AND STREAMING

LOAD BALANCER

BACK-OFFICEINTEGRATION

SERVICES

EGRESS

FRONT-END

Resource request and response (HTTPS)

Resource lookup andload balancing (REST)

Sye Streaming (R-UDP)

Device and location lookup (REST)

RESOURCEMANAGEMENT

CLIENT SDK

The Service provider is resonsible for the app and also controls the subscribers. The Sye client SDK is embedded in the app. When an End-User logs into the streaming service through the app, offered by the Service provider, opaque credential data is passed thru an API to the Sye Client.

The credentials data, together with the IP-address of the device are passed to the Integrations service in the Resource Management. The

Integrations service passes the credentials and the IP-address to the back-office . If the credentials are accepted a location is returned.

Included in the SDK are documentation, example code and a simplified reference application. The SDK is pre-integrated with 3rd party DRM.

AUTHENTICATION AND GEO-LOCATION

REDUNDANCY AND FAILOVER

All streaming functions support n+1 redundancy for high availability, or even n+2 for in-service upgrade support. Failover can be optimized for highest availability or lowest cost, with longer failover time as penalty. Full redundancy means every streaming function has at least two upstream sources. Serial redundancy means one upstream for fanouts at streaming site can be chained in serial.

A number of streaming services, Fanouts and Egress’, can be associated into a logical group to provide a site failover mechanism.

Group 2

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

FANOUT

Group 1

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

FANOUT

ON-PREMISES INGRESS

FANOUTINGRESS

STREAMING SERVICESGroup 3

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

FANOUT

ON-PREMISES

INGRESS

INGRESS

INGRESS FANOUT

FANOUT

FANOUT

CENTRAL LOCATION DISTRIBUTED LOCATION

FANOUT

FANOUT

FANOUT

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

TRANSPORT LAYER SSH DNSNTPTLS SSP (Sye Streaming Protocol)

APPLICATION LAYER TCP TCP & UDP UDP TCP UDP

PORT2253123443, 4433 or random port from 3000 and upDefault 2123

DEPLOYING SYE

Sye Live OTT can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, as a CDN service, or a combination of all three. As an example, an on-premises mode can benefit from a cloud deployment for temporary scale-out needs.

The solution supports independent installations with separated content ingest and client selection of service provider, i.e. multi-CDN. This is for handling large volume of concurrent clients connecting at the same time.

The system installs on bare metal, in virtualized or containerized. A typical Sye deployment includes 5 different VLANs, but might differ, depending on types of deployment. All functions in the system are hardened with only used ports open. The Streaming Services functions has dedicated functionality, streaming, with a bare minimum set of ports open and can be deployed outside a firewalled region of the network. The Streaming Services VLAN can of course also be firewalled, but will require heavy duty firewall equipment.

ON-PREMISES INGRESS

FANOUT

SERVICE ORCHESTRION

EGRESS

EGRESS

EGRESS

FRONT-END

TRANSCODER

LOAD BALANCER

BACK-OFFICE INTEGRATION SERVICES

INGRESS

STREAMING SERVICES

CONTROL SERVICES

ON-PREMISES

RELEASE AND VERSION HANDLING

Support is given for current and previous major version of Sye. A major release is support for 1 year..Backwards compatibility is maintained when upgrading from one major release to the next, either being intermediate or major release, unless third party changes makes it impossible. If backwards compatibility is broken the customer will recieve the releaes well on time to be able to make adjustments and retest the solution.

CONTROL SERVICES VERSION HANDLINGThe Control Services is released as a package of componentsA Control Services package has a version number on the form RX.Y

• X is the major version number and means that the release has new major functionality.

• Y is the minor version number and is used for releases containing bug fixes and minor adjustments to existing functionality.

• A release track is a series of releases with the same X value but different Y values. A release track is named on the form RX

SYE STREAMING PROTOCOL VERSION HANDLING

The Sye Streaming Protocol is released as two separate entities: one Streaming Service to be included in the Control Services release and one package of platform-dependent client-library to be included in the SDK releases.

The Sye Streaming Protocol releases have a version number on the form X.Y.Z

• X is the major version number and means that the fundamentals of the Sye Streaming Protocol have changed (Note: this means that special handling need to be taken in order to preserve backward compatibility.)

• Y is the minor version and indicates new/changed functionality• Z is the patch version and is used for bug fixes

Default ports used in the system are

LONG TERM SUPPORT

Long term support trackUp to two times every year (typically April and October in conjunction with Q1 and Q3 releases) a Control Services release track will be given long term support.

• A long-term support track will be named on the form YYYY-X, e.g. 2017-1.

• Each long-term support track has a one-to-one mapping towards one specific Control Services release track, e.g. 2017-1

• Each long-term support track has a one-to-one mapping towards one specific SDK release 2017-1

Long term support version• A long-term support version is the latest version on the Control

Services release track on the corresponding long-term support track, i.e. the long-term support version will change whenever a new version is released on that track.

STATEMENT

Client-lib/SDK compatibility:• All Control Services releases are backward compatible with all

SDK:s released at and after the date of the latest long term support tracks initial release date.

• All Control Services releases on a long-term support track are backward compatible with the SDK released at the date of the previous long-term support track.

Upgrade compatibilityIt is possible to incrementally upgrade Streaming Service instances and remain full streaming functionality within a system. Example: new Streaming Services are backward compatible. The compatibility requirement is valid for upgrading between any releases between, and including, two long-term support tracks. (There are constraints on which order Egress, Frontend and Ingress are updated, e.g. “all Ingresses must be updated first, then all Fanout’s, then the Egresses.

SERVER-SIDE AD INSERTION

AD SERVICE Continuously interacts with 3rd party Ad provider by requesting ad playlists and reporting actual viewing results. The client report s viewing progress to Ad Service via Egress

MEDIA SERVICES• Ingress filters SCTE-35 triggers in ingest stream• Ingress signals Egress to start and stop of ad breaks• Egress download ad clips provided by Ad Service• Egress is signaled through Ad Service of what playlist to be

presented per client for next ad break• Egress seamlessly stitches ads

The Ad solution resides in two sub-systems

• Ad Service• Media Services

Note, the integration with 3rd party Ad Service provider will pend customer and Ad Service provider policies and is not include in product package.

Net Insight AB (publ)Phone +46 (0)8 685 04 00, Info@netinsight.net, www.netinsight.net

The information presented in this document may be subject to change without notice. For further information on productstatus and availability, please contact info@netinsight.net or visit www.netinsight.net ©Copyright 2017, Net Insight AB, Sweden.All rights reserved. Net Insight and Nimbra are trademarks of Net Insight AB, Sweden. All other registered trademarks are theproperty of their respective owners.

FANOUT

SERVICE ORCHESTRION

EGRESS

FRONT-END

TRANSCODER

LOAD BALANCER

AD PLATFORMAD

SERVICE

INGRESS

STREAMING SERVICES

CONTROL SERVICES

CUSTOMER

SYE CLIENTS

AD CLIP ACRCHIVE

SYE CLIENTS

AD SOURCES

SCTE-35

Playlist URLs

VAST request and reporting

Clips downloadand transmuxing

Splicing

AD PROVIDER