今天就为明天构建流媒体解决方案

Ask the folks at any web startup or any technology company that offers a cloud-based service, and they will tell you they play the "What happens if?“一直在玩游戏. What happens if one of our major data centers goes dark? What happens if network operators throttle bandwidth? What happens if all of our users sign in at the same time? The reason most of these companies ask these types of questions is because they are built on breakage models. 最著名的破损 model is actually your local gym; what happens if everyone shows up at the same time?)软件服务公司, 就像所有建立在有限百家乐软件上的公司一样, 依靠用户按月或按年付费, but they typically have only built their services to withstand a percentage of user concurrency. 当然, 随着用户基础的增长, 希望, 它们的基础设施:服务器也是如此, 网络容量, 客服人员.

流媒体也不例外. But being around for 25 years has given streaming a lot of breakage moments to learn from. Each time there's an "internet record" of simultaneous users at a certain bitrate, platform operators have an opportunity to assess their own infrastructure (especially when those breakage moments actually cause something to break) and make changes to ensure the same situation won't happen again. 一刻接一刻, leading toward a future in which streaming video operators can realistically support tens of millions of concurrent users at broadcast-like quality.

不过，如果那个未来就在今天呢? 如果现在就发生呢?

COVID-19大流行和居家来自地方和国家政府的命令为流媒体创造了一场完美的风暴视频破碎模式:更多人观看在一天中播放更多的视频, contending with more people using every other internet service. No platform operator could have predicted an exponential growth in viewership overnight, compounded by global launches (Disney+ entering the U.K. 及其他欧洲国家), theatrical releases being pushed to digital early, 游戏掉落被快速追踪, and the launch of new streaming video platforms like Quibi, HBO马克斯, 和孔雀. It's not just a perfect storm for the internet and streaming video; it's digital Armageddon. 政府甚至进行了干预， asking major streaming providers like YouTube and Netflix to lower bitrates so that work-based internet usage, 对于那些现在在家工作的人来说, doesn't get throttled by everyone wanting to watch the latest episode of their favorite show in 4K.

But the current situation is also a unique opportunity. 再一次。, this kind of concurrent usage and flattened traffic patterns was most likely predicted by the majority of video platform operators. 他们无法预测的事情, 虽然, without having the sort of scale we are seeing now, 破损会发生在什么地方. 哪些系统会失败?? Would it be physical infrastructure getting overwhelmed (just too much I/O)? 会不会是水管进水了? Would it be the cloud services stretched beyond the capacity of their elasticity? You could say we are in a giant petri dish right now, the ultimate streaming experiment to determine how future architectures and technologies need to be deployed, 配置, and optimized to ensure that when this unique situation, 这场完美风暴, 成为了常态, 流媒体提供商已经做好了准备.

Thinking of this all as just "weathering the storm" isn't the correct approach, 虽然. 相反，你是在为未来做准备. 是的，目前的情况会得到解决. 一切都会“恢复正常”.“当他们这样做的时候, streaming operators can take a deep breath and know that they've built enough to handle 他们对今天需求的预测. 有了这个机会, platform operators should take a deep look into their architectures and technologies to get a jump on the future. 例如, by implementing solutions to measure end-to-end delivery, they could fix workflow components that are not performing well under the current load, 所以当电流负载成为标准时, 他们的架构已经经得起未来的考验. 当然，这是 hard to juggle all the balls and examine them at the same time. Still, there might not be a better opportunity to at least gather data on the impact of mass usage. If platform operators can implement the appropriate measurement tools for their entire workflow (most video distributors have been hyperfocused 关于收集数据的播放器), then critical 信息 can be used to influence the future-proofing after all of the fires have been stamped out.

The streaming industry probably isn't going to see the level of demand it's experiencing now for years to come. Hunkering down and just riding out the storm are like hiding in the back room when all of the members of the gym descend upon the front doors. The only way to face adversity and learn from it is head-on. 我只希望当一切尘埃落定, 所有的视频发行商, 服务提供商, and network operators share where their infrastructure broke so that we aren't all trying to weather the next storm by ourselves in the back room.

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2022年6月17日