The need for more network QoE

Intelligence

What is required is an intelligent overlay that understands the impairments of each network segment and the application requirements and takes adaptive localized actions to “hide” the network impairments from the applications and protocols so the end-to-end flow control does not kick in there, impacting the overall user experience. Cloudbrink’s Hybrid Access as a Service does exactly that, with an intelligent overlay protocol and FAST edges, which allows the protocol to make localized decisions based on the conditions and type of network being traversed.

Cloudbrink FAST edges

Simple packet loss management alone is not sufficient; For example, packets cannot be retried indefinitely, which could increase the effective latency and wastage of bandwidth. More intelligent techniques are required. We are not claiming that networks are bad all the time. But even on the best of connections, the occasional network impairments are a fact of life. On top of this, Apps are becoming more demanding. Apps require consistent performance from the network. Packet loss and delay may happen occasionally but can have a significant impact on the application performance and user experience.

Cloudbrink’s solution accelerates the network performance adaptively to match the application performance using a variety of techniques together known as Cloudbrink’s preemptive and accelerated packet recovery:

Preemptive techniques such as the following:

● Multipath

● Packet interleaving

● Aggregation

● Piggybacking

● Packet-level FEC

Accelerated recovery techniques:

● Localized and adaptive retransmissions

These techniques are used in an adaptive manner. The methods employed are based on the network segment, app characteristics, and instantaneous network conditions. Through an AI-driven engine, this enables the protocol to rewrite itself to optimize for the particular conditions to recover from packet loss and manage latency and jitter. While packet loss can be managed with FEC, localized retransmissions, etc. Delay and jitter are also managed through patented interleaving and other techniques.

In our next blog in the series, we will look in more detail at why the network matters and consider the detail of accelerated recovery techniques.