One cloud, one network, integration-GRTN creates the best streaming media scene practice

Alibaba GRTN is designed for streaming media cloud native design, which is convenient for customers to build their own streaming media cloud native applications and make streaming media services ubiquitous.

At the distributed cloud theme report held recently, Alibaba Cloud senior technical expert Lu Ri delivered a wonderful speech entitled "GRTN to create the best practice of Alibaba Cloud edge cloud streaming media scene".

Lu Ri shared his insights on distributed clouds. He said that Gartner has listed distributed clouds as the world’s top 10 top technology trends for two consecutive years , and predicts that by 2025, more than 50% of enterprises will use distributed clouds. Cloud, distributed cloud represents the future of cloud computing.

Distributed cloud can be divided into local public cloud, metro area cloud, 5G mobile edge cloud, IoT edge cloud, network edge cloud, etc., serving different user scenarios. Distributed cloud is currently in an innovation-driven period, and the future is full of challenges, opportunities and imagination.

Cloud proposes a cloud-edge-device collaboration system, where cloud + device forms a cloud, which coincides with the concept of distributed cloud.

More and more ecological applications rely on cloud-edge-end collaboration, and the edge cloud plays a role as a link between the system: on the one hand, it integrates various edge nodes to build ubiquitous edge coverage; on the other hand, , Based on self-developed distributed operating system, realize unified management and unified scheduling.

Alibaba's next-generation streaming media network GRTN is a typical distributed streaming media practice built under the cloud-edge-end collaboration system. Lu Ri summarizes it in nine words: One cloud, one network and integration .

A cloud refers to Alibaba Cloud GRTN built on the central cloud native and edge cloud native infrastructure, and organic integration of technology, learning from the design concept of SDN, the separation of CD, the control in the center, and the data plane The distribution sinks to more than 2,800 nodes in the Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud.

One network , with scene-based QOS capabilities, real-time communication capabilities within 400 milliseconds, and ultra-low latency capabilities. GRTN also has full-link RTC and dynamic networking capabilities. These capabilities are the next generation of streaming media. Typical characteristics of transmission networks.

integrated , GRTN provides an integrated solution that not only supports video streaming to the cloud and video distribution, but also has distributed computing and distributed storage processing capabilities. GRTN can provide enterprises with easier-to-use and more professional services for building streaming media applications. Cloud has turned 1614d77818e747 GRTN into a streaming media cloud native aPaaS service , with more agile computing, more real-time connections, more diverse resources, Features such as finer control and more scientific evaluation.

More agile computing

typical full link of streaming media is divided into seven links: acquisition, encoding, sending, distributing, receiving, decoding and rendering.

In traditional architecture inside, in order to build streaming cloud applications, developers often approach companies is to self-development of streaming media processing programs and software or systems deployed to the center of the cloud, virtual machines or containers edge computing in which a certain This is not only a waste of resources, but also additional research and development costs to deploy and schedule virtual machine resources.

In fact, what developers really need is a landing environment for media processing software, rather than general facilities that are bundled with operating systems, CPUs, disks, and network cards.

Cloud advocates the 1614d77818e7bb streaming media cloud native platform for recalculation. Developers can use self-developed media processing programs. calls it 1614d77818e7bd Serverless streaming media operator , streaming media cloud native The platform can deploy and schedule operators on demand. Operators can be divided into pre-processing operators and post-processing operators, which perform pre-processing and post-processing for the media stream.

More real-time connection

Among the seven links, the middle three links are related to transmission and networking. The core indicators of this sub-field mainly include scale, such as whether to support tens of millions of concurrency and some core QoE indicators, such as first screen, delay, and card Wait now.

Lu Ri said that in the future, low latency will inevitably become a standard capability in all walks of life. Therefore, higher requirements will be put forward for the streaming media network networking method.

On the one hand, the construction needs to expand more node resources , on the other hand, the system needs to strengthen the of various 1614d77818e809 heterogeneous resources . While providing high-quality link resources, it also takes into account the system's stability and easy maintenance .

Cloud advocates the use of the 1614d77818e81e Hybrid hybrid networking streaming media cloud native platform. In the future, the full-scene coverage can be realized, and the terminal will adapt the protocol for various scenarios.

Therefore, streaming media cloud native platforms have higher requirements for the rapid development and launch of streaming media protocols. Media streaming is the basic unit of streaming media cloud native platform management. Alibaba Cloud provides multiple networking methods, compatible with rich streaming media protocols, While pursuing low latency, pay attention to other indicators of the system. It is necessary to intelligently adapt to these different scenarios and business requirements to build a multi-dimensional streaming media orchestration system.

More diverse resources

In the field of cloud computing, the multi-cloud model has been generally accepted by many companies. Multi-cloud is a major trend, and multi-cloud has produced great value for customers.

When a supplier fails, you can quickly switch to another supplier to minimize the unavailability of the business. Improving business stability is a typical multi-cloud value. Therefore, we can learn from the cloud idea stability cloud service itself. The Alibaba Cloud streaming media cloud native platform can have more diversified resource hosting and scheduling capabilities.

As the containerization technology matures, the use of containerization technology to layer services and isolate tenants can minimize the impact. Although new challenges are raised for software management and operation and maintenance deployment, the improvement of business stability is obvious.

Business innovation and product iteration efficiency can be flexibly controlled depending on the customer's situation, and at the same time, the flexibility of the system can be improved, which has very good business value.

Finer control

Traditional streaming media services actually have many limitations in terms of openness, independence, and convenience. As a result, streaming media cloud vendors are channelized and have low innovation capabilities; long links and high costs.

streaming media cloud native platform can provide finer control over the platform, including programmable, observable, expandable , and low-code features.

needs to build a variety of controllers, which can be divided into two categories, one is the heavy-computing controller, and the other is the light-computing controller . A typical light computing controller allows third-party customers to extend their own QOS algorithms in a programmable way; the distributed serverless video operator distribution platform can be classified as a heavy computing controller, and third parties can also implant other operators.

In addition to business isolation, it is also necessary to further adopt secure container technology to further reduce the security risks caused by the opening of the controller. An open and independent strategy can stimulate innovation in streaming media. In the future, operator mall can be built to spread valuable operators and algorithms in the industry.

More scientific evaluation

Quality optimization is one of the important tasks of streaming media providers. There are some common pain points in the quality optimization process, such as excessive reliance on the experience of tuning engineers. This experience is difficult to precipitate and the cost of trial and error is high.

Alibaba Cloud's streaming media cloud native platform can build a more scientific and closed-loop test system with the concept of A/B testing to achieve the continuous optimization and iteration of QOE. Programmable design can effectively reduce costs and be driven by data. And evaluate the tuning effect, quickly approach the ceiling. In addition, the data platform also needs sand table simulation capabilities, which can make a priori predictions for tuning and reduce online regressions.

GRTN short-latency live broadcast RTS typical case

GRTN has undergone collaborative research and development by multiple teams of Alibaba and polished in a variety of business scenarios. At present, many apps and websites of Alibaba Group have launched low-latency live broadcast capabilities, including Taobao, Dingding, Youku, Lazada, and so on.

It is worth mentioning that compared to the traditional live broadcast user experience, in 2020, the double eleven Taobao e-commerce live broadcast delay reduced by 80% more than 1614d77818e95f, fluency increased by 30% , this year’s double eleven Further compress the delay, improve fluency and clarity .

In terms of external commercialization, GRTN provides thousands of domain names to help customers provide live audiovisual experience. For example, a short video on-line platform GRTN RTS after the live broadcast delay reduces 70% much, and video rendering Caton reduced 40% more.

Finally, Lu Ri said that he hopes to use the good situation of distributed cloud computing to promote the streaming media cloud service more inclusive 1614d77818e9bb, while continuing to serve the Internet industry, it will better balance.

Alibaba GRTN is not only based on cloud native, but also committed to providing streaming media cloud native services so that our customers can build their own streaming media cloud native applications and stream media services. everywhere. Cloud will work with all colleagues to create the inclusive 1614d77818e9e0 streaming media cloud native ecosystem to provide users with a more real-time, smoother, and more high-definition audiovisual experience.

"Video Cloud Technology" Your most noteworthy audio and video technology public account, pushes practical technical articles from the front line of Alibaba Cloud every week, and exchanges and exchanges with first-class engineers in the audio and video field. The official account backstage reply [Technology] You can join the Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud Product Technology Exchange Group, discuss audio and video technologies with industry leaders, and get more industry latest information.