Open Caching: Supporting the future of interoperable video delivery

As principal members of the Streaming Video Alliance (SVA), Varnish Software supports all standardization and interoperability work related to Open Caching. Of course, more broadly, we are also committed to open standards. 

What is Open Caching?

Open Caching is an open, non-proprietary architecture developed by the Streaming Video Alliance, of which we are a member. The basic idea is to standardize protocol handling for CDNs and establish standard architectural blueprints or guidelines for implementing an open caching system. 

What problems can open caching solve?

Ultimately, open caching technology is about ensuring performance and delivering video content reliably and scalably. That’s why we are working on it, as these are core principles for us. 

The function of open caching is to reduce the number of times the same video titles are delivered directly from the content provider’s site. That is, a title can be cached once and delivered to subscribers from cache, as today’s standard caching works. What’s different is that open caching breaks down a few walls and creates a kind of ‘open plan’ cache, storing cached content within the network, creating a local cache for network ISPs (for example). This leads to a lower total volume of transmitted data, and much faster, more efficient delivery, at least of popular, locally cached content. 

Varnish and Open Caching

With the ongoing standardization work happening with Open Caching, we are actively investigating how we support open caching technology as video streaming begins to dominate the internet. One of our focus areas, as ever, is enabling high-performance content delivery and end-to-end QoE for end users, and as open caching technology evolves and becomes part of the mainstream, we know it will solve some of the challenges of video streaming both now and as video demands grow. 

Get in touch with one of our experts to discover more about our work in open caching 👇