Heightened Traffic and Lack of Predictability Continue to Shape the Online Video Landscape
我们都在继续适应2020年前9个月世界面临的新现实, the idea of “returning to normal” is very much a moving target. 更实际地, 随着我们找到新的工作方式，我们的社交和职业生活正沿着一条曲折而不可预测的道路走向“新常态”, 学习, 社交, 尽情享受吧.
Online video has been and will continue to be at the heart of many of these new ways of life. Whether it’s getting on group calls with coworkers and friends, studying and attending school via eLearning platforms, or watching a movie or TV show via a streaming provider, 在线视频服务已经成为我们生活中重要的一部分，比去年这个时候许多人想象的要重要得多. And with telecommuting becoming more and more prevalent, millions of people have begun to incorporate working from home into their everyday lives.
During the first five months of 2020, 使用Lumen CDN Mesh Delivery平台的最大的直播和VOD广播公司的在线视频流量比1月份平均增长了近40%,[1] with several notable trends standing out among the data. Despite some consistency across these trends, 然而, 电视网络, 全天候新闻频道, and VOD services had little to no lead time to prepare for the surge in demand.
资讯重于娱乐
考虑到动荡的时代, combined with the reality of people spending much more time at home, it’s not surprising that live news sources across local, 区域, and national networks have seen an increase in viewership. Speeches from politicians across the world have drawn more viewers than ever before, 比如我们在3月中旬看到的飙升，当时政治领导人宣布了各自的避难命令.
当然, 为回应世界事件而发表的重大政治演讲往往没有多少准备时间, 对于负责容量规划和确保视频流体验质量的工程团队来说，哪一个可能会引起主要的头痛. 当这种情况发生时, 拥有一个可以快速扩展的灵活解决方案对这些流媒体提供商以及观众使用的底层互联网服务提供商来说是一个巨大的优势.
In the two months following most shelter-in-place orders, 与前两个月相比，使用CDN Mesh Delivery的五家最受欢迎的电视直播公司的收视率平均增长了112%.[2]
欧洲主要电视网的直播流量峰值在这段时间内几乎翻了一番(比欧洲最大的橄榄球和足球赛事的流量峰值还要高——他们有几个月甚至几年的时间来计划这些赛事)。. Rather than crumble under the increased demand, 他们能够经受住这一切，多亏了我们点对点交付网络上的流量分布。
Drilling down further into a spike on April 28, we see that as the video provider’s traffic skyrocketed, the quality of service improved as mesh delivery was able to reduce the strain on the CDN, which led to less rebuffering for the viewers watching the stream:
更广泛地说, 使用CDN Mesh Delivery传送国家元首公告的三大电视网络能够在各种流量高峰期间始终保持较低的再缓冲水平, seeing only slight variations compared to “normal”[3] 交通状况. One of the networks was even able to reduce peak-time[4] rebuffering by 5% on mesh-compatible traffic.[5]
Across three of the biggest ISPs plus a handful of smaller providers[6] that delivered French President Emmanuel Macron’s national speeches from March through May, 与正常流量相比，我们在高峰流量期间看到了更少的重新缓冲实例[7], showing that overall performance improves as more users stream content via the mesh network.
This sort of increase in demand was consistent across many European television providers, which also put an extraordinary strain on ISP networks. 那些没有制定应急计划(如将多余的流量转移到对等网络上)的公司更容易受到用户体验退化的影响. 然而, 数据还表明，网状网络通过从传统网络中卸载流量，全面提高了性能——即使对于那些没有启用网状网络的用户也是如此, 因此，对于那些只从基于服务器的网络获取内容的人来说，减轻了一些拥塞.
Meanwhile, live sports events have started to return to European cities and US cities. 但随着比赛在空无一人的体育场进行，由于球迷无法亲自观看，更多的比赛通过电视转播和流媒体播放, we expect to see similar traffic spikes among the sports video carriers in the coming months.
加速剪绳
在2020年之前，取消传统的有线电视订阅，转而支持电视直播流媒体提供商，已经是一种快速增长的趋势——尤其是在美国和年轻观众中, 而且从那以后还在加速.
根据 财富, cancellation of traditional cable subscriptions jumped by 70% in the first quarter of this year across the United States, and will likely grow even more when the Q2 stats are released. 有趣的是, 然而, this has not been accompanied by a similar rise in subscriptions to streaming TV services. Many of the providers continued to grow in Q1, but at a 比去年这个时候要慢, while others have actually shrunk during the same time. This is likely due to the economic impact that many people are suffering from, 以及缺少体育直播节目(这是许多OTT服务的最大卖点之一)。. So while more people than ever are canceling their cable subscriptions to save money, many are not yet replacing them with a streaming service until the economic impact subsides.
That’s not to say, 然而, that streaming TV viewership dropped across the board. 再看看安置订单下达后的两个月与之前两个月的对比, 我们发现，五家最受欢迎的VOD提供商中有四家的视频交付量出现了大幅增长, 平均增长了61% , even as countries began opening back up.
一家欧洲付费电视订阅频道的视频点播流量在峰值和平均观看时间都增加了一倍以上, 也许这表明，在这段时间里，拥有多样化内容目录的流媒体平台在观看时间和订阅量方面都处于有利地位. 再一次, this was a spike that no one could have predicted at the start of the year, but which the provider had to be able to handle or else risk losing viewers and subscribers.
Solutions Tailor-Made for the New Normal
当办公室开始重新开放时，我们在2020年上半年看到的一些趋势将部分消退, 大型人群活动恢复, and people feel more comfortable venturing outside and being around each other. 然而, 其中很多趋势, such as increased work-from-home environments and cord-cutting strategies, 都将留在这里. The ability to determine when and how these shifts will occur is next to impossible. There’s simply no playbook for navigating this new reality, which makes scalability and flexibility more important than ever before.
因此, Lumen®CDN Mesh Delivery 在帮助企业和消费者在新的数字工作和社交环境中保持联系方面处于独特的地位. By adding flexibility and elasticity to their delivery network, 内容提供商不必担心正确配置CDN容量以支持其流量或过度/不足地向CDN提供商承诺. 自3月中旬以来，我们已经能够为出现意外的持续流量增长的服务提供无缝过渡, 并将继续提供灵活的服务, 适应性强的交付解决方案，帮助平台扩展到已经转向流媒体的受众，以适应这种新的“常态”.”
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[1] 在CDN Mesh Delivery平台上，7家顶级电视网络和付费服务从1月到5月的流量变化百分比的平均值.
[2] Traffic comparison between January 2020 and May 2020.
[3] “Normal” traffic is defined as any time period outside of the designated “peak” time periods
[4] “峰值”流量被定义为整个时间段前5%的同时观看者数量最多
[5] 使用CDN Mesh Delivery的设备, along with other devices with the OS, 运行点对点传递所必需的浏览器和硬件功能，但是为了建立控制组，这种类型的传递没有被激活.
[6] The 3 major ISPs + Others accounted for 95.占总浏览量的5%.
[7] Users using mesh technology and the control group combined.
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