How to use HolaCDN to load share from multiCDN

In my previous post I showed how to use HolaCDN to improve the performance of a mp4 video which is already accelerated using CDN service.

This time I would like to show how to use HolaCDN MultiCDN feature to improve the performance of a multi-birate HLS video. HolaCDN MultiCDN will automatically measure performance of multiples CDNs (defined by user) and select the optimal CDN to use.

In this demo, HolaCDN will select among the customer origin, a 3rd party CDN and HolaCDN.

In the screen capture below, Chrome Developer Tools shows the HolaCDN JS client loads video chunks from serveral hosts: s3video.cheungwaikin.com (customer origin), dc7tqspqe5l18.cloudfront.net (a 3rd party CDN) and 76.73.18.98 (a HolaCDN server).

The following picture shows the result generated by the command hola_cdn.get_stats() in the Chrome Develop Tools Console: 20% of traffic is from the customer origin, 18% from the 3rd party CDN, and the remaining is from HolaCDN.

How to set up HolaCDN MultCDN feature in this demo?
Step 1: create a new Zone named “hlsmulti” by defining the Page URL as http://aws.cheungwaikin.com/video-hls-flowplayer-cloudfront-hola-origin.html.

Step 2: in the MultiCDN selection algorithm, I input the $0.5 as the cost of HolaCDN and $0.05 as the cost of “My existing CDN”. Doing so to instruct HolaCDN to use My existing CDN unless HolaCDN improve performance (better video start/seek time, less buffering, higher video quality/bitrate).

Step 3: for demo purpose, HolaCDN will take actions – collects QoE statistics and deliver video content – if the user is using Chrome browser. For every 100 pageviews from Chrome users, all will colllect QoE statistics, and HolaCDN will try to deliver video content in 90 pageviews.

Step 4: define “My existing CDN”. In this demo, the are two “CDNs” – dc7tqspqe5l18.cloudfront.net and s3video.cheungwaikin.com.

Step 5: I use Static MultiCDN switching mode. If HolaCDN finds dc7tqspqe5l18.cloudfront.net and s3video.cheungwaikin.com perform better than HolaCDN, then 50% possibility that video will be retrieved from dc7tqspqe5l18.cloudfront.net and 50% possibility that video will be loaded from s3video.cheungwaikin.com.

That’s all.

In other to do a control experiment, I use Firefox to browse the demo page. Based on my setup, HolaCDN will do nothing and the browser will get all HLS TS chunks from the host defined in the html source code. Here is the result from Firefox + Firebug:

Want to try it yourself? Go to apply a HolaCDN free trial account now!