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Anatomy of a Personalized Livestreaming System

Authors:

Ben Y. ZhaoAuthors Info & Claims

IMC '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Internet Measurement Conference

Pages 485 - 498

https://doi.org/10.1145/2987443.2987453

Published: 14 November 2016 Publication History

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 performance of Periscope, the most popular personal livestreaming service with 20 million users. Using detailed measurements 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.

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Index Terms

Anatomy of a Personalized Livestreaming System
1. Networks
  1. Network performance evaluation
    1. Network performance analysis
2. Security and privacy
  1. Network security
    1. Web protocol security

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IMC '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Internet Measurement Conference

November 2016

570 pages

ISBN:9781450345262

DOI:10.1145/2987443

General Chairs:
Phillipa Gill
University of Massachusetts--Amherst
,
John Heidemann
USC/ISI
,
Program Chairs:
John W. Byers
Boston University
,
Ramesh Govindan
USC

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 14 November 2016

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National Science Foundation

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IMC 2016

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SIGCOMM
USENIX Assoc

IMC 2016: Internet Measurement Conference

November 14 - 16, 2016

California, Santa Monica, USA

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IMC '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 48 of 184 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,083 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/INNOCOMP63224.2024.00104
Xu CLi ZHuai GZhao JZhu YMa XWang H(2024)Enabling lightweight immersive user interaction in smart buildings through learning-based mobile panorama streamingComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2024.04.002222(68-76)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2024.04.002
Chou HHuang YHuang P(2023)Best-Effort Scan of Twitch’s CDN in EuropeProceedings of the 18th Asian Internet Engineering Conference10.1145/3630590.3630592(10-18)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3630590.3630592
Yan ZYi J(2022)Dissecting Latency in 360° Video Camera Sensing SystemsSensors10.3390/s2216600122:16(6001)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22166001
Wang CLiu YHuang P(2022)Jujuby: Design and Deployment of a Crawler for Twitch CDN MappingProceedings of the 17th Asian Internet Engineering Conference10.1145/3570748.3570755(44-52)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3570748.3570755
Li JLi ZLu RXiao KLi SChen JYang JZong CChen AWu QSun CTyson GLiu HKuipers FOrda A(2022)LiveNetProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference10.1145/3544216.3544236(812-825)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2022
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Wang HTang GWu KWang J(2022)PLVER: Joint Stable Allocation and Content Replication for Edge-Assisted Live Video DeliveryIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2021.309078433:1(218-230)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
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Li ZLi JWu QTyson GXie G(2022)A Large-Scale Measurement and Optimization of Mobile Live Streaming ServicesIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2022.3208094(1-16)Online publication date: 2022
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Li JLi ZWu QTyson G(2022)On Uploading Behavior and Optimizations of a Mobile Live Streaming ServiceIEEE INFOCOM 2022 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM48880.2022.9796824(1299-1308)Online publication date: 2-May-2022
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