NAB 2016: SES and Rutgers Test Satellite CDN for Streaming, OTT, 5G

SES has announced the first phase of content-delivery–network (CDN) development at Rutgers University’s School of Engineering to demonstrate and measure the effectiveness of SES’s CDN overlay solution in meeting the growing demand for streaming over-the-top (OTT) video.

Conducted at the Wireless Information Network Lab (WINLAB) at Rutgers, the initial demonstrations will involve satellite for both linear and on-demand OTT content delivery to multiple devices and platforms within the ORBIT (Open-Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks) and GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) wireless test beds at WINLAB. A national demonstration of the satellite-based CDN will make up the second phase of the project, through a collaborative effort involving other universities and their network test beds across the U.S.

SES enables programmers to reach more than 100 million U.S. television households through virtually every cable-TV, IPTV, and direct-to-home provider, positioning SES to accompany media and entertainment companies into the realm of OTT. By delivering and caching OTT content across these distribution points, SES can help TV networks, content producers, and cable and wireless providers meet escalating OTT demand with the reliability and scalability of traditional broadcast television. Rutgers researchers will also be looking at applying the strengths of satellite in support of future networks, including an essential role in the development and deployment of 5G.

“As demand for streaming linear and on-demand content bogs down terrestrial networks, satellite’s inherent point-to-multipoint and multicast capabilities make it the ideal content-delivery network for OTT,” explains Steve Corda, VP, business development, North America, SES. “The demonstrations at Rutgers University’s WINLAB are designed to compare the scalability and reliability of a satellite-based CDN with terrestrial networks.”

He predicts that the satellite CDN will become an indistinguishable part of the Internet and a critical differentiator in OTT delivery.

“The integration of satellite multicast capabilities into a content delivery network offers an important new delivery mechanism to OTT content providers,” says Dr. Dipankar Raychaudhuri, professor, electrical and computer engineering/director, WINLAB, Rutgers.