By Yasser Syed & Alex Giladi, Comcast Cable; Ali C. Begen, Ozyegin University
Service providers are moving towards IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) technologies using fragmented delivery as a way distribute video services over bandwidth-varying environments. This has already been successful with on-demand or pre-packaged video services (television shows, movies) and has been adapted, to some degree, for live event-based services (sports, news) -- but fragmented delivery works best for content that is already pre-packaged into a final format before delivery. Distributing live events, by contrast, presents additional latency-related challenges due to the real-time handling of requests, storage and delivery. For instance, customers expect to be able to record live broadcasts for later viewing. However, creating low-latency, live streaming by altering existing technology tools and structures simultaneously creates new and often prohibitive complexities. This paper examines some of the existing technologies in use today to optimize for network latency, and introduces possible implementations for achieving low latency streaming.