Enhancing Resource Management for On-Demand Video Streaming

This paper is a technical report included in the Proceedings of the 2024 USENIX Annual Technical Conference. It discusses the challenges and solutions related to resource management in video streaming, particularly focusing on ByteDance's PCDN system. The report outlines the limitations of traditional Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and introduces PCDN as a cost-efficient alternative that utilizes edge resources. It details the evolution of PCDN into PCDN+, which integrates a centralized logic for dynamic resource allocation and a decentralized logic for controlled client-side operations. The paper presents findings from extensive A/B testing and real-world deployments, demonstrating that PCDN+ effectively alleviates resource imbalances, enhances the utilization of low-cost resources, and improves service speed. The authors emphasize the importance of optimizing resource management to address the growing demands of video services and reduce operational costs, especially for platforms with large user bases like ByteDance's Douyin.