Qwilt has enhanced its Open Edge Service Provider CDN — an application within its line of Open Edge Cloud solutions.

The Open Edge CDN, with an augmented suite of APIs, extends Qwilt’s expertise in edge computing, open caching and web-scale content delivery with an innovative, cloud-based service provider CDN offering built on the Apache Traffic Control open source project.

This combination of cloud-based CDN operations and edge delivery results in two unique benefits to the service provider: web-scale architecture and low-latency, high-quality content delivery from the network edge.

Open Edge CDN – Another Application of the Qwilt Open Edge Cloud

The Open Edge Service Provider CDN is another application in Qwilt’s edge cloud portfolio. The Open Edge CDN enables cable, telco and mobile network service providers to build a private CDN to distribute their own or partner’s managed content to their subscribers with a broadcast TV-like experience, regardless of the type of consuming device or the subscriber location. The Open Edge CDN is optimized to support streaming delivery of TV services including video-on-demand (VoD), live events and cloud digital video recorders (CDVR).

The comparison between the legacy approach to building and operating a service provider CDN and Qwilt’s solution is striking. In the legacy approach, the service provider needs to navigate a complex process of engineering, procuring, deploying and operating a content delivery network to satisfy ever-changing requirements and use cases. The complexity is compounded by the need to frequently upgrade hardware, software and interfaces to keep up with new requirements, and changing content formats, content partners and streaming protocols.

Deploy and Scale Qwilt’s Open Edge CDN in Three Steps
In contrast, deploying Qwilt’s Open Edge Service Provider CDN consists of three basic steps. First, deploy Qwilt software delivery nodes on commodity hardware deep in edge of the service provider network. Qwilt’s edge delivery software is now able to support unified delivery of service provider, partner and OTT content from a single platform. Second, connect Qwilt nodes to Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud to enable secure access to the service provider’s cloud-based dashboard, which manages configurations, operations and performance. Third, with this Open Edge CDN solution, the service provider configures, operates and monitors content delivery services in real-time. As with all open cloud architectures, the Qwilt Open Edge CDN includes a rich suite of open API services that allow service providers to scale delivery at the edge of their networks. These APIs have been enhanced in the newest version to improve performance and to reflect the broader functionality and use cases approved by the Streaming Video Alliance in the past year. This cloud-based, open architecture means service providers can leverage the reach, scale and performance uniquely available in their last-mile network. The result is full service provider control over a web-scale content delivery solution with low-latency, high-quality edge delivery.

“Qwilt’s Open Edge CDN solution provides our customers with a new, web-scale architecture for content delivery,” said Alon Maor, CEO at Qwilt. “We invite service providers to join the movement to the edge. Our Open Edge CDN is another mission-critical application for the service provider edge cloud.”

Leveraging the Power of Open-source – Agility, Community, Scalability

Qwilt’s Open Edge CDN is based on the Apache Traffic Control open source project. Traffic Control was first developed by Comcast and then open-sourced in 2015. Qwilt has enhanced the core Traffic Control baseline with web-scale technology and cloud-powered Qwilt management. Further, Qwilt has placed significant design emphasis on simplicity and ease of management, as well as increased resilience and scalability offered by the cloud. The result is an extremely fast, reliable and secure CDN solution that flexibly meets the needs of a wide range of service providers.

“Qwilt’s innovative work on the Open Edge CDN is exactly the sort of thing we were hoping to see when we open-sourced Traffic Control,” said Jan van Doorn, Fellow at Comcast. “We applaud Qwilt’s ongoing contributions to the open-source community and their engagement with the growing movement of Apache Traffic Control users.”

Open Edge CDN – Part of Qwilt’s “3-in-1” Solution for the Service Provider Edge Cloud

Qwilt’s Open Edge CDN solution is one of the “3-in-1” set of applications which support three primary edge cloud use cases for content delivery within the service provider network. Each Qwilt edge node can support the following three modes of content delivery:

Open Caching: Delivery of 3rd party and partner content, both HTTP and HTTPS, through delegation and using specifications approved unanimously by the Streaming Video Alliance. Open Caching can be used by commercial and private CDNs to delegate delivery to edge nodes deployed in the service provider network.

Transparent Caching: Delivery of partner, OTT and service provider owned HTTP content through transparent caching. Transparent caching works autonomously to detect, classify, cache and deliver popular content at the network edge. In this way, transparent caching optimizes streaming content across the network.

Open Edge CDN: Delivery of service provider owned content, both HTTP and HTTPS, via edge nodes deployed in the service provider network and managed by cloud-based operations.

The benefits of the “3-in-1” solution include better utilization of edge cloud infrastructure – both hardware and software – integration of edge cloud operations on a single platform and optimization of all content delivery through a web-scale platform. Through Qwilt’s solution, the service provider realizes the significant economic and operational benefits of a single, unified platform for content delivery.