San Mateo, California and Beijing, China
April 14th, 2020
NKN is thrilled to join iQIYI in advancing technical innovation for video content delivery.
iQIYI is an innovative market-leading online entertainment service in China. iQIYI’s platform features highly popular original content, as well as a comprehensive library of other professionally produced content, professional user generated content and user-generated content. The company distinguishes itself in the online entertainment industry by its leading technology platform powered by advanced AI, big data analytics and other core proprietary technologies.
iQIYI has a strong in-house technical solution team, which is building one of the world’s largest content distribution networks on modern architecture such as multi-CDN, edge computing, and smart scheduling. iQIYI built its own HCDN software that can run on many different hardware and software platforms, including X86 computers as well as embedded devices such as NAS, TV set-top box, and WiFi routers. This capability fits NKN’s edge computing infrastructure extremely well.
NKN’s micro hosting capabilities were developed on top of its own open-source peer to peer network architecture. This architecture offers the ability to scale to millions of nodes and has already seen a growth of up to 20,000 nodes globally. Integrated with its micro hosting is network management for deploying and managing services such as 3rd party CDN software running on the network. The nodes in this architecture also have a built-in payment channel with the ability to reward network operators in real-time. Altogether, NKN software offers the micro hosting platform for iQIYI’s HCDN software.
During our PoC stage, it was observed that popular content can result in up to 1:10 caching savings. Such caching savings can avoid network congestion and reduce energy consumption in the communication network. For long tail content, on the other hand, caching can materially improve customer experience since the playback start time can be reduced. So the solution not only scales well but also improves user experience.
Looking forward, there are several ways the two companies can collaborate to further improve the video content delivery system, where both streaming quality (4K/UHD, 8K, VR) as well as streaming quantity (number of paid subscribers) continue to rise rapidly. iQIYI has first-hand experience with user and application level quality of experience (QoE), plus sophisticated scheduling algorithms to serve the right content to the right user at the right moment. NKN excels in network level Quality of Service (QoS) and Internet topology and traffic metrics, smart scheduling for packet and session routing, as well as e2e and hop by hop security and verification. These two complementary areas of competence can be leveraged to make future breakthroughs in optimized video content delivery that truly serves and delights the users.
For more details, please visit the two company’s websites. For NKN’s nCDN solution, please visit https://www.nkn.org/ncdn/ or email to cdn.support@nkn.org .
About iQIYI, Inc.
iQIYI, Inc. is an innovative market-leading online entertainment service in China. Its corporate DNA combines creative talent with technology, fostering an environment for continuous innovation and the production of blockbuster content. iQIYI’s platform features highly popular original content, as well as a comprehensive library of other professionally produced content, professional user generated content and user-generated content. The Company distinguishes itself in the online entertainment industry by its leading technology platform powered by advanced AI, big data analytics and other core proprietary technologies. iQIYI attracts a massive user base with tremendous user engagement, and has developed a diversified monetization model including membership services, online advertising services, content distribution, online games, live broadcasting, IP licensing, talent agency, online literature and e-commerce etc.
For more information, please visit iQIYI’s official website: https://www.iQIYI.com/
About NKN
NKN is the new kind of P2P network connectivity protocol & ecosystem powered by a novel public blockchain. We use economic incentives to motivate Internet users to share network connections and bandwidth. NKN’s open, efficient, and robust networking infrastructure enables application developers to build the decentralized Internet so everyone can enjoy secure, low cost, and universally accessible connectivity.
Email: contact@nkn.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NKN_ORG