VDO-X

VDO-X (Or Video Exchange) is software to set up and manage a Content Delivery Network.

Overview

VDO-X is professional web-based management software to deploy and manage a Content Delivery Network. The software is focussed at large size media assets and large volume delivery. It offers support for all major streaming delivery services and web servers. These services can be used in a mixed setup. VDO-X automatically senses the popularity of assets in specific regions of the CDN and automatically copies assets to edge servers near these regions. Viewers are redirected to these servers. In the case of unavailability, viewers are automatically redirected to other edge or core servers. VDO-X offers full self-provisioning for each user. Users can upload assets, manage assets, set up live streams and see realtime statistics. Many APIs are offered for deep integration with asset management, content management, transcoding, portal and billing systems. The flexibility and automation level of VDO-X allows a small staff to operate a CDN that handles thousands of delivery servers, thousands of customers and millions views per day.

Basic functions

VDO-X allows the administrator to:

• Set up streaming media and web servers as core, fallback, overflow or edge servers
• Cluster physicals servers into logical delivery farms and edges
• Set up networks via manual IP addresses or GeoIP range
• Link edge nodes and networks together for geographical optimization
• Set up commercial hosting packages
• Create account holders, hand out a product, and give them access to specific servers
• Migrate servers and accounts on the fly

VDO-X allows the operator to:

• Monitor the load and availability of each node in the CDN
• View actual file transmission and checks between the nodes
• Manage traffic from and to the nodes

VDO-X allows the account holder to:

• Upload streaming media assets for VOD delivery
• Upload any digital asset for file delivery
• Set up mountpoints for live streams
• Manage assets and mountpoints
• View realtime delivery statistics for all the assets
• Force distribute assets and relays to specific nodes
• Generate embed codes and URL's for many media clients
• View in-depth usage statistics

Standards

VDO-X is built around the latest web standards. VDO-X supports Flash Media Server, Windows Media Services, QuickTime Streaming Server, Wowza Media Server, Icecast, Internet Information Server and Apache. API's are open, including RSS, XML and SOAP. Metafile URL generation for many playlist types is supported, including MOV, QTL, XSPF, SMIL, RAM, ASX, XML and WML. Many media clients including QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash, Silverlight, 3GPP are supported. Logs are written in W3C format so they can be analyzed by many third party tools.

Mechanisms

VDO-X uses realtime popularity measurement, dynamic and pro-active asset and live relay distribution, and realtime dynamic application level redirection. The benefits of this approach are that content delivery is realtime and dynamic opposed to the much more static DNS redirection. It also gives the CDN operator full control over assigning resources and managing traffic over a CDN opposed to less controllable solutions like caching and P2P. VDO-X knows the availability of each service, each server and dynamically routes users to other available servers if a error occurs. VDO-X instantly copies popular assets and streaming relays to available resources and redistributes viewers to those resources. Thresholds can be set per account and can be changed on the fly. VDO-X also matches IP geographical data from end users to available servers to offer true local offloading of traffic. A CDN operator can instantly move traffic across the network to free up links and servers. A CDN operator can instantly deploy additional resources per account. And a CDN operator can instantly add new IP geographical data and match networks to multiple edge servers or edge clusters. VDO-X offers in-depth realtime availability, load, geo origin and redirection data so the operator can act immediately. Migrating and restoring servers and content, adding servers to clusters, and migrating accounts is on the fly, without any service disruption. These mechanisms are unique to VDO-X, making it a true next generation CDN solution.

History

Jet Stream BV, the developers of VDO-X started webcasting in 1994 and developed redirection, monitoring and log processing tools for their increasing number of large webcast projects. These tools were further developed into separate commercial products, alongside a integrated media delivery framework server with support for all major streaming protocols.

In 2002 Jet Stream launched a project called VDO-X to start a open CDN in the Netherlands. This project is adopted by all the ISPs and broadcasters in the Netherlands. Jet Stream has handed over the project to the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, the worlds largest internet hub. The AMS-IX Video Working Group is working towards a open CDN protocol. ISPs are implementing the protocol to offload streaming capacity to their own networks. In summer 2008 the European Champions League, the Tour de France and the Olympics were broadcast using the Open CDN approach.

In 2002 Jet Stream also launched the StreamZilla media delivery service, which is a popular CDN in Europe, with over 1 billion delivered views in six months and fast growing. This CDN with A+ status for global performance uses a European-wide network to distribute the content globally and is setting up edge servers to increase the performance and capacity in remote regions. StreamZilla is powered by XL Media Server and VDO-X.

In 2008 Jet Stream has integrated its content delivery management tools into a single, integrated web-based management environment, called VDO-X CDN 2008 Suite and is making the software available to the market. A preview of this release is available at the company website.

Market

VDO-X is used by many Dutch and Belgian broadcasters, and a growing number of European network owners, internet access providers, hosting providers and network operators. VDO-X is also used for a new nation-wide CDN in Russia. VDO-X 2008 is currently tested by a large number of network operators, carriers, hosting providers and CDN's from all continents.

Network owners are reluctant to outsource their content delivery to third party CDN operators: they pay a lot to distribute while their own infrastructure is unused. Using VDO-X, anyone with a IP network can upgrade their network to become a full-featured Content Delivery Network.

External links

• VDO-X website