2020 is the year of the explosion of real-time audio and video technology applications, e-commerce live broadcasting, video conferences, online classes and other scenarios have attracted wide attention. As the world’s leading cloud communication provider, We have served more than 4,000 enterprise customers with over 2 billion minutes of daily audio and video calls, covering more than 200 countries and regions around the world.

In the process of continuously providing audio and video services to a large number of customers, it is found that c-end users constantly put forward higher requirements for interactive quality. The factors affecting the core quality indicators such as delay, lag and service availability are all related to network quality.

Based on this, we developed Massive Serial Data Network (MSDN) based on Massive customers’ audio and video service experience, combined with SDN technology, to build a global reliable multi-cloud communication link, help users obtain higher Network quality, and create clearer and stable audio and video cloud services.

So, how is MSDN to improve the guarantee of daily hundreds of millions of massive audio and video streams of high quality transmission? Here we follow the real use of small Z scene, a look ~

Z, who is in charge of operation and maintenance of a live broadcasting platform, had a large live broadcasting event held last Saturday. He and his friends provided technical services for the event. During the event, he encountered several problems in his work. How can these problems be solved through MSDN?

Question 1

When preparing for the activity, Z predicted that the number of users participating in the activity tonight would increase dramatically according to the activity heat and other data. In order to ensure the availability and stability of the service, Z required to expand the capacity. However, the service provider reported that the network resources were limited at present, so it needed to redeploy nodes, which took a long time.

The solution

As we serve a large number of live streaming customers, we can quickly respond to the rapid expansion of customers’ business volume. The self-developed MSDN adopts a neutral network architecture and can access the public network, IDC, network lines and other resources of different suppliers. It can obtain the highest quality resources at the lowest cost and achieve “AnyWhere, AnyTime, AnyResource”. In the face of the customer’s demand for capacity expansion when the traffic volume explosively increases, the system can respond quickly at the speed of minutes, realizing the capacity expansion without user’s perception.

Question 2

After the preparation work was completed, the platform activity proceeded as scheduled. Z monitored all the data in the background in real time. In this process, Z found that some audiences had a large viewing delay and the interaction was not natural. He judged that there was a problem with the network transmission, but could not optimize it because there was no other path to refer to.

The solution

There are many factors that affect the delay of live broadcast, and network quality is one of them. MSDN is optimized to the extreme from the network side. By detecting the quality of each network line in real time, the quality data can be drawn into a weighted map by MSDN. Every time the user pushes the flow, every data flow will select the optimal path for transmission according to this weighted graph. When a network fault occurs or the quality of the original path deteriorates, a new data transfer path is automatically planned to reduce packet loss or delay caused by network jitter.

Question 3

Although there were some delays, most of the users who participated in the event were satisfied with the effect of the live broadcast. The company hopes that each subsequent campaign will not only maintain a stable service for most users, but also further improve it. Therefore, Z needs to consider how to improve and optimize the service guarantee in the future.

The solution

The improvement of network transmission quality requires continuous optimization based on massive data and countless transmissions. MSDN, which is constructed by itself, will conduct real-time quality assessment and post-quality assessment on the massive data of hundreds of millions of levels transmitted by the platform every day. By recording one high-quality transmission path, it provides reference for the next data transmission and more users. Through countless data streams and countless times of transmission, instant MSDN has gradually become a “dedicated line level” stable audio and video virtual network with wide coverage of available area, ultra-high concurrency, strong availability and ultra-low delay.

Through the above scenarios, we can see the main functions and functions of MSDN. MSDN can provide clear, stable and reliable real-time voice and video cloud communication services for global customers. Compared with traditional SDN, MSDN not only has more control and flexibility, but also fits the business characteristics of audio and video cloud services.

Refined routing can realize traffic control and traction

That is, MSDN’s meticulous routing control can strictly control data transmission on the established path, which is easier for daily network operation and maintenance. For example, when releasing gray scale, certain traffic can be controlled to go through gray scale area. At the same time, it can adjust the transmission path of traffic based on specific areas/specific businesses, and flexibly cope with complex business scenarios and network conditions. For example, when the transmission effect of cross-border cloud vendors is not good, MSDN can choose another better path for transmission through detour or based on weighting algorithm.

As the following example, from IDC1 to IDC2, if directly connected, the delay is as high as 130ms, but the MSDN chooses to bypass IDC3 through dynamic programming, then the delay can be reduced to 80ms.

Insensitive and transparent, which can be optimized for streaming media

For non-media data transmission, such as room signaling, the IP layer can seamlessly switch transmission paths without being aware by the service layer. For large-traffic media transmission, the nodes of the forwarding path can optimize the transport layer protocol to improve the retransmission efficiency and reduce the delay. Especially in long-distance transmission, the network delay can be greatly reduced after optimization of MSDN.

The following is the transmission of multiple data streams from Shanghai to Hong Kong. The difference between MSDN acceleration and non-MSDN acceleration is shown in the upper and lower graphs:

Shanghai > Hong Kong, accelerated without MSDN

The average delay is 100ms and packet loss is 15%

Shanghai > Hong Kong, accelerated via MSDN

The average delay is 37ms and packet loss is 15%

Namely MSDN is based on completely open, true cloud architecture, which means that you can obtain high-quality network resources anywhere in the world at any time, to achieve full coverage of the global availability area; At the same time, based on the self-developed weighting algorithm, the dynamic real-time planning of a global node optimal path transmission roadmap, and through the visual quality operation, continuous optimization and upgrading, so that every audio and video stream transmission, stable, reliable, low delay.