Mux and Synamedia have partnered to integrate Mux’s real-time QoE signals with Synamedia’s Quortex Switch, enabling smarter CDN switching decisions that maximize viewer experience while optimizing delivery costs. We’ll be showcasing the integration live at IBC (Hall 1, B49) on Saturday, September 13, at 9 am CEST, with executives from both companies available to discuss. With IBC around the corner, I sat down with Robin Oakley, Synamedia’s Senior Director, Edge CDN Services, to catch up on Switch, its impact in the market, and the trends shaping the year ahead. Read our conversation below:
The origin story
Eric: What was the primary reason you built and launched Quortex Switch?
Robin: I love an origin story and I suppose to tell the origin story of Quortex Switch, I need to tell a bit of my own story. I’ve worked in broadcasting for a long time now and in that time I’ve been mainly doing things related to distribution. From getting tennis or boxing from stadiums to getting over 200 TV channels to viewers across EMEA using more conventional technologies like satellite and fibre. Then I evolved across to D2C live sports streaming, distributing globally to millions of viewers. As complex as fibre and satellite are, they are nothing compared to the thousands of variables you have to deal with in the streaming world. From the players, devices, app versions, protocols, ISPs, origins and the big cloudy bit in the middle the CDNs. My mission with live OTT streaming was simple — make it work as well as traditional broadcast, where viewers were used to just sitting back and enjoying the content without thinking about how it got there.
So what you find out when you start working with CDNs is they aren’t all equal; they have different strengths and weaknesses. What may perform well in one region with one ISP may not perform so well with another ISP. The capacity that ensures your video playback success at scale, can change as it’s subject to the conflicting demands of all the other CDN users, from e-commerce to software downloads. Throw into that mix the economics of buying CDNs traffic commits and regional price differences, I found myself playing a game of 3D chess where the rules changed every day.
The solution is a management tool that allows you to decide which CDN your traffic gets delivered through, allows you to create rules for different viewer segments and allows you to react quickly, actioning changes and making those changes invisible to the viewers. If you can do this right, like magic, no one watching notices you have done anything at all.
What I found was that existing CDN management systems were based on allocating a CDN at playstart, required a session to crash before an alternate CDN could be allocated, and usually involved deploying some kind of SDK into your app on a client device, which causes a development headache, integrating and maintaining this SDK integration in your code base.
So enter Content Steering. These standards were being developed when I joined Synamedia 18 months ago; our Architects were working with those standards. So we started to look at what a product would look like involving those standards. Standards that had HLS and DASH support, standards that allowed for a CDN to be changed seamlessly mid-playback, standards that were supported at a player level and did not involve any additional proprietary SDK to be installed in the playback application. And so Quotrex Switch was born, a SaaS Solution that allows content providers to leverage the standards with an easy-to-use interface that brings in the responsiveness and segmentation required to manage quality, cost and commercial objectives.
Signals that matter
Eric: What metrics are the most important indicators that drive a change of CDN mid-playback?
Robin: The most important metric I’ve worked with as an indicator that something is going wrong is Rebuffering. You know here that your player is stuck, its buffer is empty, the viewer is getting the spinning wheel of doom. This can happen for many reasons but with a metrics tool like Mux you could quickly identify if this is CDN-related and take action a change. This could be a technical issue with a particular CDN or congestion-related which could manifest across a whole region or with a particular ISP. Buffering for too long leads to Video Playback Failures which is another key metric you don’t want to see.
Other metrics that come into play are Average Bitrate — you want to get viewers onto the top rung of that ladder for the HD or 4K viewing experience. So being able to manage traffic CDN by CDN is important to ensure there’s headroom to get those viewers through at the top bitrates.
Start up time is also a strong indicator that something could be going wrong. Viewers don’t want to wait to get to the content so it’s important to keep that as low as possible. Too long and the player gives up resulting in a Video Start Failure.
Mid-Stream vs. Session Start
Eric: What are the biggest benefits of enabling content steering mid-stream compared to only making decisions at session startup?
Robin: If you only work with allocating a CDN at playstart, you need another playstart to get a viewer onto a different CDN. So you literally need that session to end before an alternate CDN can be allocated. This could be viewer instigated, stop and reselect the content but this could also happen because of buffer starvation which result in a Video Playback Fail. In this circumstance your viewer’s stream enjoyment has been interrupted. If you can see congestion on the horizon or some metrics beginning to suffer, midstream switching allows you to react and switch viewers to alternate CDNs before your CDN headroom gets used up or before issues start to affect playback quality. You may also find you have more headroom than you expected on a cheaper CDN so could make a decision to move those viewers to the most cost effective distribution without them noticing.
Industry outlook
Eric: How do you see multi-CDN strategies and content steering evolving over the next year?
Robin: It may feel like there’s fewer CDNs out there with market exits for the likes of Stackpath, Lumen and Edgio but my experience suggests a global monopoly is never a good thing for customers. My experience also suggests we will see the emergence of a need to control your streaming destiny more in the face of increasingly congested global CDN networks that are trying to be all things for all customers. This does not suit the video (and in particular live) streaming world that relies on Gbps and no Gbytes to ensure a quality viewing experience. So companies are going to need more and more CDN networks to fulfil the peaks on a Global and regional level. As I said earlier not all CDNs are equal, not geographically, not in their connections with ISPs and not with the capacity they can offer on a day to day basis. With a tool like Quortex Switch, content streamers will be able to flexibly and seamlessly manage more CDNs and benefit from regional edge networks and ISP level CDNs that put the caching wheres it’s needed closer to the viewer. Being able to incorporate regional and ISP specific CDN’s also allows content providers to be creative with commercial carrier bundle deals, leveraging the carriers CDN to ensure the content gets the quality playback it deserves from those partnerships
AI impact
Eric: What role will AI and emerging standards like Media Content Steering and MCP servers play in the evolution of Switch?
Robin: We are already experimenting with how AI can help you control Quortex switch. How, in conjunction with metrics for example from Mux, it can beat a human at the 3D game of chess that involves managing a CDN mix in a given segment to minimise cost and maximise performance. It can suggest and create new segments in real time, respond to issues, and traffic levels with a framing of the business logic and CFO looking over your shoulder. AI can spot things humans miss and be there 24/7 anywhere and everywhere across the world. Watch this space!
