Edge computing for interactive media and video streaming

Abstract

Video streaming and computer games are among the most popular and highest bandwidth consuming media in the Internet. Video contents consume around 70% of the total bandwidth usage in the Internet today. Advancements in media generation tools, high processing power, and high speed connectivity have enabled generation of live, interactive, multi-view media generation. Cognitive assisted and online multi-player gaming have unlocked new horizons for gaming experience. However, such interactive gaming, and multi-view and 360-degree view videos, are currently limited by delay intolerance and excessive bandwidth usage. Edge computing is the name of a set of new technologies, such as cloudlets, micro data centers, fog, and mobile edge computing. It aims to provide storage and computational resources near to user at the network edge, to minimize latency and response time. Edge computing is foreseen as a significant enabler of Internet of Every Thing (IoET) era by extending the cloud services and resources at the end of the network to deliver very low latency and real-time communication. It can provide significant services to video and gaming applications and enable new stream of interactive multimedia era. In this paper, we highlight some of the potentials and prospects of edge computing for interactive media, and present some preliminary works in the area. We shed light on how edge computing can be used to tackle various challenges faced by todays interactive media application. We also present the benefits of using edge computing to save cost, bandwidth, and energy in multimedia applications, video streaming, and transcoding.