Multicasting popular multimedia content to end users of a satellite broadband service by accurately predicting popular content and adjusting bandwidth

The aim of the project was to develop a system for multicasting popular multimedia content to end users of a satellite broadband service. By accurately predicting popular content, the system lowers the total bandwidth use for the satellite broadband operator. At the same time, the system enhances the use experience of watching video and similar content from an online source. The project's main premise was that the demand for video rich media is rapidly gaining popularity over the traditional internet. In the UK and worldwide, the demand for video over the internet is increasing at a lightning speed with the increase in fast broadband connections to homes and the emergence of more service providers that are offering content streaming services on a commercial and non-commercial basis. Although it is a win-win situation for service providers and end users, the demand in the market has proven problematic to the internet service providers who gain nothing or little from providing “fat pipes” for enabling these services to their users while bearing the costs of providing and running the infrastructure. Project NXY looked at addressing the issue of content delivery to the satellite broadband end users that used the services during the pilot of the project and the technical and commercial implications on the satellite broadband provider who operated the service. For satellite broadband providers, the challenge is to provide a high quality user experience while keeping the costs of delivery down. A key to this is making use of the satellite’s intrinsic quality to cost effectively multicast content.