Verizon Communications Inc.
Customized and extremely low latency streaming from the network edge

Abstract:

Streaming improvements are provided by using computing, caching, and/or other resources that are provided at different network edges in a Multi-access Edge Computing ("MEC") enhanced network. A MEC device, at a network edge, may customize a stream passing to a client device via the network edge by identifying a break in an original stream manifest passing to the client device, and by inserting a link for the client device to request and play content that is selected by the MEC device during the break. The MEC device then passes the modified stream manifest, instead of the original stream manifest, to the client device. The MEC device may also be triggered, via a prioritization message from a host in the network, to prefetch, cache, and serve a stream from the network edge to a client device accessing the network via that network edge.