Akamai and Kuaishou Implement QUIC to Improve Video Experience

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Akamai, NASDAQ: AKAM), the world’s most trusted solution to power and protect life online, has partnered with Kuaishou, a Chinese short-form video community with nationwide popularity for recording and sharing people's lives, to improve video experiences for overseas users through the implementation of the QUIC protocol. The combination of Kuaishou’s global commercial applications and Akamai’s technology enhances network performance and security in complex network environments, increases the QUIC usage by 90%+ on average, and further promotes the adoption of QUIC to provide a better video experience for overseas users.

The QUIC implementation is the latest initiative in a long-standing relationship between the two companies since 2015 to provide a better user experience for Kuaishou's global users, content creators, and partners through end-to-end optimization of the coordination between Kuaishou’s client and server and Akamai’s global intelligent delivery platform.

“Kuaishou focuses on the exploration and application of new technologies in its efforts to provide users with quality video services. In this process, Akamai is an intimate and professional partner who is willing to break through the boundaries of cooperation between traditional cloud vendors and enterprise customers. The commitment of the two companies to the implementation of the QUIC agreement has enabled us to better reach our audience in a globally diverse network environment. We expect our partnership with Akamai will inspire the implementation of new standardized protocols, and continue to advance the adoption of standardized protocols," said Yu Bing, senior vice president of Kuaishou and head of StreamLake.

“We are very excited to closely collaborate with Kuaishou to exceed their customer  expectations and accelerate their international growth,” said Dr. Alex Caro, SVP and GM of Edge Experience, Akamai. “The standardization and adoption of innovative technologies like QUIC not only requires deep technical knowhow but also requires organizations to work across traditional boundaries - through iterative optimizations and shared learning. Our partnership with Kuaishou is testament to what can be achieved towards broader adoption of new and innovative technologies and we look forward to our continued partnership.”

QUIC is a UDP-based transport protocol. It has become the underlying transport protocol of the next-generation Internet protocol HTTP/3 for its efficient transmission and multi-channel concurrency capabilities. The introduction of HTTP/3 standardization will have a profound impact on the Internet industry, and attract more vendors and application developers from all industries, accelerating the implementation of standardization. With the adoption of standardization, the original small-scale application scenarios are gradually expanding to benefit more communities, creating a more complete ecosystem.

The standardization of a protocol requires not only the active promotion of standards organizations, but also the exploration, practice and implementation by major cloud vendors and enterprises. The two companies have been exploring QUIC, the predecessor of HTTP/3, well ahead of the standardization process started. Kuaishou fully implemented the self-developed kQUIC in 2020, which was launched in China at full scale with a cluster peak QPS (Query Per Second) exceeding 10 million. As the business grows, Kuaishou looked at overseas network optimization to improve the overseas user experience. Based on years of iterations and optimization, and positive benefit verification on QUIC, Akamai’s platform brought comprehensive QUIC support for Kuaishou. 

After implementing QUIC, Kuaishou and Akamai analyzed the interaction between clients/servers and significantly increased the benefits brought by QUIC to improve first packet/first video frame playback and reduce the failure rates.

To further analyze the protocol performance, Kuaishou launched the QUIC connection-level data burying and collection capabilities overseas in addition to the request-level QUIC data. Through in-depth analysis of connection-level data and a series of problem fixes, Kuaishou and Akamai observed a significant increase in QUIC utilization again, which remained at an excellent level of 90% on average. At the same time, the playback performance on the client showed positive improvements in video start failure and lag rates, significantly improving video viewing experience of users.

With the release of the next-generation HTTP/3 standard, which will play an important role in online content consumption, Akamai will partner with Kuaishou to optimize the utilization of QUIC, advance the standardization of HTTP/3, and innovate in more areas.

Kuaishou is a leading content community and social platform with its mission to be the most customer-obsessed company in the world. Kuaishou has relentlessly been focusing on serving its customers and creating value for them through the continual innovation and optimization of its products and services. At Kuaishou, hundreds of millions of people can chronicle and share their life experiences through short videos and live streams and showcase their talents. Working closely with content creators and businesses together, Kuaishou provides product and service offerings that address various user needs that arise naturally, including entertainment, online marketing services, e-commerce, online games, online knowledge-sharing, and more.