Service Director
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Media Flow Manager Administrator’s Guide
CHAPTER 2 Media Flow Manager Overview
Service Director
This section describes how the Service Director feature works. Online video viewing can be
significantly improved by delivering content from a location close to the user. Juniper Networks
Service Director application is a cost-effective and easy to deploy solution to direct video
requests to the nearest content server and deliver location specific content. The benefits are:
•
Better customer traction with improved Quality of viewing Experience (QoE) and localized
content
•
Eliminate transit bandwidth costs by delivering video from servers within the ISP’s network
Note!
The Service Director application is not a replacement for Global Server Load Balancing
(GSLB) or the DNS infrastructure that provide many additional services.
Figure 2
How Service Director Works
1. User clicks on a video at example.com
2. Server returns HTML embedded with Flash player
3. Flash player makes a Web query to the Service Director to get the edge server’s
hostname
4. Service Director returns an XML response with the HOST field containing the server
address (Media Flow Controller or Content Delivery Network) based on the user’s location
5. and 6. The Video is delivered
The player and/or portal contacts the Service Director which uses the source IP from the
HTTP header or the IP address in the HTTP query URL and resolves it to one of continent/
country/state/city/ZIP/ISP. Based on the match, an XML file is returned to the Media Flow
Controller making the query with several details. From the XML file the Media Flow Controller
figures out which server to contact. The XML file can be auto-created based on configuration,
Media Flow Controller
San Francisco
East Coast user
Central US user
Content delivery network
g015424
Central
Management
Console
with
Service Director
Application
West Coast user
Media Flow Controller
New York
Server
www.example.com
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