Agile Content introduces solution for fighting against piracy on content platforms

Agile Content has rolled out its Agile CDN Director solution at Telenor Sweden, a major telecommunications operator in the country. This deployment marks a continuation of the longstanding partnership between the two companies, aimed at enhancing efficiencies and optimizing the utilization of Agile Content subsidiary Edgeware’s content delivery network.

As piracy continues to surge in the over-the-top (OTT) sector, the significance of technological solutions like Agile CDN Director is becoming increasingly apparent. Television piracy alone constituted nearly half (48%) of all access to infringing sites in the EU in 2022, according to a report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

Agile CDN Director builds upon Edgeware’s existing CDN architecture, introducing advanced features such as real-time cache, network switching, and integrated server quality of experience monitoring. This evolution enables Telenor Sweden to enhance the efficiency of its next-generation television services by seamlessly integrating its CDN with that of its sister company, Telenor Norway, facilitating resource utilization across networks and ensuring uninterrupted service even in the event of site loss.

Marielle Lind, Telenor Sweden’s technical architect for TV back-end systems, said of the Agile CDN Director: “As responsible for Telenor Sweden’s CDN and ensuring our customers get the quality of experience they expect on their devices, I have a long list of requirements I want from my network, some of which we couldn’t meet. But with Agile CDN Director now up and running, suddenly a lot more is possible. So far, I haven’t found anything that’s impossible.”

Another key advantage of the solution that Telenor Sweden has found surprisingly effective is its ability to keep hackers out and transmit only to authorised users, company stated. As Telenor also considers, Agile CDN Director provides greater visibility into everything happening in the CDN at any given time, including the use of common access tokens that prove that customer requests are coming from Telenor’s own back-end and not from external agents, including hackers trying to access a network.

This additional layer of security protects a CDN like Telenor’s Edgeware Network and ensures that only valid customers have access, which in turn frees up capacity and ultimately provides better network speeds for the TV viewing public, according to the information released. Agile CDN Director provides a whole new level of security. “Our records show that we have blocked between 50,000 and 60,000 invalid requests each day that were trying to access the CDN and reach a streaming server,” said Marielle. “With Agile CDN Director, it’s easy to identify those invalid requests and deny them access. If we didn’t have it, the network would be much busier with traffic that shouldn’t be there.”

“Telenor Sweden has long been a customer of ours on Agile Content, growing significantly with their Edgeware CDN in place and it’s great to see the partnership continue with this latest deployment of Agile CDN Director to manage an increasingly complicated CDN landscape with multi-integrated CDNs,” commented Johan Bolin, Chief Emerging Business Officer at Agile Content. “The Telenor team has quickly seen a long list of benefits at their disposal, some of which we were not even aware of before their deployment. So we are looking forward to giving them back to the Agile Content team and provide many more customers with the same cost efficiencies, operational advantages and security measures.”