Over the past decade, new streaming technologies have changed how we watch TV shows, online gameplay, and most recently, sports. That led us to the current model – streaming on-demand or live content with fast delivery, thanks to a global web of servers. These content delivery networks (CDNs) have been the backbone of fast internet delivery for quite some time, but new, emerging AI technologies could make them even better.
How CDNs Work Right Now
The core premise of a CDN is that you get content faster when the host server is closer to you. A lot of websites serve a global audience, so most users won’t live near the company’s hosting servers. To solve this, CDNs are server rooms all over the world that cache online content. Then, if a European accesses an American website, they pull the data from a server in their own country instead.
While CDNs started as a convenience, they’ve effectively become the backbone of the modern internet. The speed we’ve come to expect from most internet services is largely thanks to them. Services like Cloudflare have made a name for themselves as the internet’s #1 CDN provider and have naturally pivoted to offering cloud hosting too. If those kinds of services go down, you can expect major disruption.
Why CDNs Are Important For Streaming
CDNs are so important to streaming because they cut latency. This means a smoother playback for video-on-demand content, or a smaller, almost negligible delay if you’re watching live content. Watching live sports isn’t new, but with the internet, more interactive live content has become popular in gaming and social media spaces. Sites like Justin.tv (now Twitch) became the streaming counterpart to YouTube way back in 2007, while YouTube itself would embrace live streaming in 2011.
They spawned many new genres of user-generated live video content where interactivity is key. Elsewhere, televised card game tournaments were streamed online as early as 2013. Today, the space has developed to a point where players can play card games at a real table, with a professional host, despite the players not being in the room. Many providers host 24/7 rooms where people can play blackjack online, with some rooms offering the classic experience while others add special twists and multipliers to the traditional blackjack formula. Without the speedy delivery secured by CDNs, it’d be a lot harder to play these games.
How AI Can Further Optimize Live Content
As demand for streaming (and other digital service hosting) increases, we need to keep building new server rooms. That gets expensive, and since live streaming and generative AI went mainstream, the cost of maintaining data centers has also increased dramatically. This makes the CDN industry a competitive game – only the biggest tech companies can afford to operate.
In response, some companies are already trying to tackle these issues using new generative AI models for distribution and decision-making. Put simply, AI can help streamed events become more profitable by predicting and sidestepping traffic congestion in the CDN network, making automated real-time adjustments without human intervention. That means a higher user retention rate, personalized delivery to in-demand, less congested markets, and generally cut costs by reinvesting time and money with more purpose instead of the typical, global catch-all approach.
In the fight to make data centers more efficient and cost-effective, AI is currently our most powerful tool. Entertainment will only get more digital in the future, so it’s an industry that will heavily focus on supportive, sustainable growth until the next boom comes along.
