Which CDN to Download From? A Client an...

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) has been evolved to enable different video streaming services to deliver media content over the Internet with less latency and improved quality. However, using only a single CDN is highly vulnerable to outages and crashes, resulting in a poor viewer experience. Regardless of viewers, traffic, or media content, a single CDN will be never sufficient to satisfy viewers' quality of experience (QoE) requirements. To avoid single CDN issues, leveraging multiple CDNs from multiple providers, refers to multi-CDN, helps in improving performance, increasing geographic coverage, and alleviating outages. An essential part in multi-CDN solutions is the decision to select the best performing CDN in real-time, depending on periodic measurements of CDNs and video players. While multi-CDN architecture provides tremendous benefits, it has not been well investigated and integrated with the industry. This paper highlights various decision strategies for real-time CDN selection that helps content providers select the right solution aligned with their goals and business.