Content Delivery Network Strategies, by Stef van der Ziel

2002. Since I already had a background in distributed delivery, I dived deeper into the internet infrastructure, to come up with a smart distributed solution for mass-scale content delivery.

It involved a simple number of technologies I already had developed in operational or rudimentary form. Parallelized delivery servers as core and edge servers. A smart asset and live relay replication mechanism. A smart geo load balancing application. Some log processing scripts.

Technical stuff. But why and how does this work? Let’s compare this with Logistics. Read more

2005. Inspired by RSS and Podcasting, I began experimenting with video subscription services. Live and VOD streams via RSS. I called this VODcasting.

I was -and still am- convinced that internet video volumes are still small. The big bang is when consumers will consume high quality video streams in their homes. Sitting on their couch, eating chips, drinking cola and staring at their 52″ plasma’s or whatever, for hours.

There had been some initiatives towards internet stream based Set Top Boxes. Most really were crap. Utter total crap. If it wasn’t the hardware, it was the software. Even the Philips Streamium box sucked.

And if the boxes were OK, then they lacked a good interface, or they could only be used in a proprietary setting, with locked protocols, custom codecs and difficult middleware, exclusive content.

Read more

In 2001 I came in contact with the Dutch Innovation Platform, from the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Because I foresaw a major shift in the value chain.

Thanks to the Internet, consumers were not locked anymore in the old walled garden, linear value chain:

Consumer -> buys television package from cable operator -> buys tv channels distribution rights -> broadcasters add advertising revenues -> pay the content producer.

The open Internet allowed multiple new value chain models:

Consumer -> buys flat-fee broadband. End of chain.

Consumer -> surfs the web for content aggregators who ask money for their service or add advertising revenues -> to pay the content producer.

I called this Open Play. Read more

1998. Before broadband, we had to let our live encoders use dial-up modems to upstream to our streaming servers. We had eight encoders.

The venue had a telephone system so we had to dial a ’0′ to dial outside the building. But the telephone network caused dropped links. We asked the IT manager to switch our lines to direct outside lines.

We set the encoders to auto redial every xx seconds and went for dinner. When we came back, all encoders still reported disconnects. And we had to get on air within 15 minutes…

So I called the manager but he claimed that he immediately had switched the lines. Then I heard an encoder dial in. And a very, very angry voice came out of the modem.

We had left the extra ’0′ in the dial scripts. Eight encoders had dialed to an existing number in French Guyana every few seconds, for over 1,5 hours… excusez moi! :-)