Significant effort and investment go into producing great online advertisements, music videos, and trailers for blockbuster movies. If the video stream is not available, you end up with “dead air.” If the stream rebuffers repeatedly, causing users long wait times, you’re creating poor end-user experience and, worse, possibly losing them as customers. Both outcomes are going to result in a negative impact on your brand and your revenue.

1. Don’t Lose Your Viewers:
Keep Their Attention With High
Performance Streaming
Jennifer McClain, Senior Product Manager
jennifer.mcclain@compuware.com

3. Online Video Engagement By Country
120
Unique Viewers Per Month (in millions)
US
100
80
60
Germany
UK
40 France
India
20 Spain
Mexico
0

4. The Streaming User Experience
Complete Streaming User Experience
Initial Initial Initial Rebuffer: Play Play
Request Buffer Play Play Pauses Resumes Complete
User Waits for Stream User Watches Streaming Content

5. Why Streaming Monitoring Matters
The Application Delivery Chain
Data Center
Customers
Edge Browsers
Server Local
3rd Party/ ISP
Cloud Services
Origin Edge
Server Server Major
ISP
Network
Edge Content
Server Delivery
Networks
Mobile
Carrier
Devices
Employees Employees

6. Why Streaming Monitoring Matters
The Application Delivery Chain
Data Center
Customers
Edge Browsers
Server Local
• Inconsistent geo performance ISP
• Bad performance under load
3rd Party/
• Blocking content delivery
Cloud Services • Poorly
performing
Origin Edge JavaScript
Server Major • Network
Server peering • Browser/
ISP problems device
• Network incompatibility
problems • Bandwidth
throttling • Pages too big
Network • Bandwidth • Network
contention • Inconsistent • Low cache
peering connectivity hit rate
• Improper load
Edge problems Content
balancing
Server • Outages Delivery
Networks
• Configuration issues Mobile
• Oversubscribed POP Carrier
Devices
• Poor routing optimization
Employees Employees
• Low cache hit rate • Network resource shortage
• Faulty content transcoding
• SMS routing / latency issues

7. Planning a
Streaming
Strategy

9. Baselining

10. Continuous Monitoring

11. Synthetic and Real User Monitoring
The Application Delivery Chain
First Mile Backbone Real Users
• Network and server monitoring • Synthetic Monitoring from data • Real user monitoring
centers in key locations
Customers
Edge Browsers
Server Local
3rd Party/ ISP
Cloud Services
Edge
Server Major
ISP
Network
Edge Content
Server Delivery
Networks
Mobile
Carrier
Devices
Employees Employees

12. Streaming Performance Metrics
Total Test Time
Buffer Buffer Empties / Buffer Buffer Empties /
Loads Reloads Loads Reloads
Performance Metrics Correlate
Playback Playback Playback Playback
Initial
Request to Streaming EventsResumes
Begins Interrupted Complete
DNS
Time, Connection Initial Rebuffer Playback Time
Initial Playback Time
Time, Buffer Time
Initial Data Time
Received Time
Playback Time
Start-up Time Rebuffer Ratio = Total Rebuffer Time / Playback Time

13. Streaming Waterfall Charts
PLAY REBUFFER

14. Rate-limiting Synthetic Streaming Tests
Akamai State Of the Internet Report, Q3 2011 - February 14, 2012

15. Real Streaming Test Examples

16. Real Streaming Test Examples

17. Review
• Understand how 3rd parties impact your streaming
performance
• Location is important!
• Test streaming performance throughout every phase of your
deployment
• Know your baseline
• Combine Synthetic testing with RUM
• Rate-limit your Synthetic tests