Low latency cacheable media streaming

US9237387B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC · US

Inventors

• John A. Bocharov · Seattle, US
• Krishna Prakash Duggaraju · Redmond, US
• Lin Liu · Lo Wu, CN
• Jack E. Freelander · Monroe, US
• Ning Lin · Glastonbury, US
• Anirban Roy · Austin, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 3, 2009
• Grant date: Jan 12, 2016
• Expiry date: Apr 22, 2030

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04N21/47202
• WIPO field: Audio-visual technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A low latency streaming system provides a stateless protocol between a client and server with reduced latency. The server embeds incremental information in media fragments that eliminates the usage of a typical control channel. In addition, the server provides uniform media fragment responses to media fragment requests, thereby allowing existing Internet cache infrastructure to cache streaming media data. Each fragment has a distinguished Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that allows the fragment to be identified and cached by both Internet cache servers and the client's browser cache. The system reduces latency using various techniques, such as sending fragments that contain less than a full group of pictures (GOP), encoding media without dependencies on subsequent frames, and by allowing clients to request subsequent frames with only information about previous frames.