Insights from Analysis of Video Streaming Data to Improve Resource Management
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Today a large portion of Internet traffic is video. Over The Top (OTT) service providers provide video streaming services by creating a large distributed network cloud on top of infrastructure owned by multiple entities. Our study explores insights from video streaming activity by analyzing data collected from Korea's largest OTT service provider. Our analysis of nationwide data shows interesting characteristics of video streaming such as viewing patterns (early leaving viewer vs. steady viewer), viewing habits of users (when do the users watch? which contents?), correlation between user profile information (e.g., age, sex) and viewing habits, etc. We discuss how understanding such user behaviors and patterns helps to better manage contents and network resources (number of active users inside the network for a given time, variations in popularity of contents for a given time and population set, change in preferred device type, hence, content type and quality). Video on Demand (VoD) streaming involves costly (and often limited) compute, storage, and network resources. Findings from our study will be beneficial for OTTs, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and Carrier Network Operators, to improve their resource allocation and management techniques. Our study also discusses future works that can help in this direction.
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