Application of SAND Technology in DASH-Enabled Content Delivery Networks and Server Environments

MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) provides formats that are suitable to stream segmented media content over HTTP. DASH clients follow a client-pull paradigm by adapting their requests based on the available bandwidth and other local resources. This has proven to be easier to deploy over content delivery network infrastructure than server-push technologies. However, this decentralized nature introduces new challenges such as offering a consistent and higher quality of service for premium users. MPEG addresses this issue in the recently published MPEG-DASH part 5, Server and Network-Assisted DASH (SAND). The key features of SAND are asynchronous network-to-client and network-to-network communication of quality-related assisting information. This way, the quality of services can be improved by the DASH clients reacting realtime to the assistance and recommendation sent by the service provider. In addition, DASH-Industry Forum (DASH-IF) is further defining interoperable guidelines to optimize SAND deployments in a variety of environments: home network, over-the-top, and so on. DASH-IF is expected to publish this new interoperable guideline by the end of 2017.