Anatomy of a Personalized Livestreaming System
Bolun Wang
Xinyi Zhang
Gang Wang
Haitao Zheng
Ben Y. Zhao
Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2016)
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Paper Abstract
With smartphones making video recording easier than ever, new apps like Periscope and Meerkat brought personalized interactive video streaming to millions. With a touch, viewers can switch between first person perspectives across the globe, and interact in real-time with broadcasters. Unlike traditional video streaming, these services require low-latency video delivery to support high interactivity between broadcasters and audiences.
We perform a detailed analysis into the design and perfor- mance of
Periscope, the most popular personal livestream- ing service with 20
million users. Using detailed measure- ments of Periscope (3 months, 19M
streams, 705M views) and Meerkat (1 month, 164K streams, 3.8M views), we
ask the critical question: Can personalized livestreams continue to scale,
while allowing their audiences to experience desired levels of
interactivity? We analyze the network path of each stream and break down
components of its end-to-end delay. We find that much of each stream's
delay is the direct result of decisions to improve scalability, from
chunking video sequences to selective polling for reduced server load. Our
results show a strong link between volume of broadcasts and stream
delivery latency. Finally, we discovered a critical security flaw during
our study, and shared it along with a scalable solution with Periscope and
Meerkat management.