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The major criticism the author has is the requirement for HTTP2 push for ALHLS, which many CDNs don't support. While I agree it is a valid criticism, I am glad
by chime 7y ago
The major criticism the author has is the requirement for HTTP2 push for ALHLS, which many CDNs don't support. While I agree it is a valid criticism, I am glad Apple is forcing the CDNs to support push. Without the 800lb gorilla pushing everyone to upgrade, we would still be using pens on touchscreens.
I am not a fan when Apple obsoletes features that people love and use. But I always support when Apple forces everyone to upgrade because friction from existing providers is what keeps things slow and old. Once Apple requires X, everyone just sighs and updates their code, and 12mo later, we are better off for it.
That being said, I agree with author's disappointment that Apple mostly ignored LHLS instead of building upon it. Chunked encoding does sound better.
- spenczar5 7y agoThere are good reasons CDNs don't support http/2 push. It’s hard to load balance and hard to operate, since it requires a persistent TCP connection with the client for the entire duration of the stream, which can be hours. It has consequences that echo almost everywhere in the architecture.
- chime 7y agoI agree. But now there is motivation for the CDNs to solve these problems in a clever way so that users can get better performance and lower latency.
- spenczar5 7y agoThey are likely to “solve” them by charging more. Serving low-latency HLS to Apple devices will cost more, continuing consolidation into the few tech giants big enough to pay what it takes to get inside the iOS walls. Hardly progress.
- stefan_ 7y agoWhat exactly is the benefit of HTTP2 for HLS CDN use, particularly? The obvious benefit of not using it is that you don't need your CDN to do TLS, likely to be utterly superfluous if video chunks are validated through the secure side-channel of the playlist already.
- otterley 7y agoTLS provides privacy, not merely validity. Some folks don't want others knowing what they watch after connecting to, er, Disney+. (I have no idea why video streaming might be better over HTTP/2 either.)
- brians 7y agoTLS specifically does not prevent a passive eavesdropper from telling what compressed video you’re watching. If they can drop a few packets and force you to rebuffer, they can tell very quickly—plausibly faster than you can tell watching the video start!
- otterley 7y agoThat’s interesting. Do you have a reference to a working example?
- danielparks 7y agoHow does that work?
- nitrogen 7y agoDropping packets is not passive...
- Dylan16807 7y agoOkay so ignore that part. It's a tangent to the actual point.
- 7y ago
- makomk 7y agoThe main redeeming feature of traditional HLS is that it can use ordinary HTTP CDN infrastructure. If you're going to require video-streaming-specific functionality in CDNs anyway there is absolutely no justification for designing your protocol in this horrendously convoluted, inefficient, poorly-performing way.