Vivisecting YouTube: An active measurement study
Abstract
We deduce key design features behind the YouTube video delivery system by building a distributed active measurement infrastructure, and collecting and analyzing a large volume of video playback logs, DNS mappings and latency data. We find that the design of YouTube video delivery system consists of three major components: a “flat” video id space, multiple DNS namespaces reflecting a multi-layered logical organization of video servers, and a 3-tier physical cache hierarchy. We also uncover that YouTube employs a set of sophisticated mechanisms to handle video delivery dynamics such as cache misses and load sharing among its distributed cache locations and data centers.
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Google has implemented a hierarchical distribution of content for YouTube and other Google services.
“For example, Google has implemented a hierarchical distribution of content for YouTube and other Google services [117], [118].”
From QoE Management of Multimedia Streaming Services in Future Networks: A Tutorial and Survey (2020) · cites this paper as [118]
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QoE Management of Multimedia Streaming Services in Future Networks: A Tutorial and Survey
Barakabitze, A. A., Barman, N., Ahmad, A., Zadtootaghaj, S., Sun, L., Martini, M. G., & Atzori, L. (2020) · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · doi:10.1109/comst.2019.2958784 · Cited by 239 · see citing works
- Authors
- Adhikari, V. K., Jain, S., Chen, Y., & Zhang, Z.-L.
- Affiliations
- University of Minnesota (US)
- Venue
- 2012 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2012-03
- Pages
- 2521-2525
- OpenAlex
- W2082171998
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 14.49
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) (publishedVersion)
- University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Caching and Content Delivery
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Traffic and Congestion Control
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Software System Performance and Reliability
- Keywords
- YouTube, active measurement, latency, cache hierarchy, distributed caching, cache misses, load sharing, data centers, video streaming
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