Live NFL broadcast footage, full screen: a quarterback drops back and prepares to throw as teammates block nearby, looping. The same broadcast footage, now shown playing on a wall-mounted television in a modern living room, the view pulling back to reveal the room around the screen. Looping footage: the television continues showing the live football broadcast. Continuing from the living-room television, the view moves into the screen and transitions into an animated white 3D model of the stadium — the same abstract diagram style used for the rest of this sequence. Looping animation: a dotted line extends from the stadium down to a small server building icon, representing the broadcast signal leaving the stadium. Animated transition: the stadium connects via two curved dotted lines to server building icons appearing on either side. Looping animation: orange dotted arcs connect the stadium to two server building icons, representing data flowing to content delivery network servers. Animated transition: more server building icons appear in a widening arc around the stadium, each connected by orange dotted data lines. Looping animation: a wide arc of server building icons surrounds the stadium, all connected by orange dotted data lines. Animated transition: the arc of server icons widens further as more nodes are added, connected by orange dotted data lines. Looping animation: a wide arc of many server building icons, all connected to the stadium by orange dotted data lines. Animated transition: a "total network traffic" bar appears at the bottom of the diagram, filling up to represent congestion as data lines multiply across the server arc. Looping animation: the arc of servers and data lines, with a "total network traffic" bar underneath showing heavy congestion. Animated transition: the server arc and its data lines shift in color from orange to a cooler green tone. Looping animation: the data lines are now green, representing improved network performance. Animated transition: the arc of servers splits into two color-coded halves, orange and green, each with its own "total network traffic" bar for comparison. Looping animation: the same two-toned split server arc, orange and green, with the green (optimized) side showing shorter, more direct data paths and lower traffic than the orange side. A television mounted in a home living room displays a live football broadcast. Looping footage: the television continues showing the live football broadcast.

The Future of Live Experiences Starts Closer to You

Comcast's distributed edge brings content and computing closer to customers—helping deliver exceptional live streaming, gaming and next-generation digital experiences at scale.

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Consider a live football game. For fans at home, the action feels instantaneous—but every play takes a complex journey to reach the screen.

It starts at the stadium, where cameras capture the action and an onsite production studio packages the broadcast before sending it to a central production facility.

The data is encoded and sent by the broadcaster to content delivery network (CDN) servers, where the stream is cached, or stored, as short video segments.

Viewers tune in. Their streaming devices begin requesting video segments from the nearest CDN server. During major live events, millions of viewers request the same segments at nearly the same time.

Viewer requests queue at the CDN servers. With only a few central locations serving audience demand, requests back up and traffic congestion builds on the network, resulting in buffering, delays and poor video quality.

Comcast is pioneering a new approach to content delivery, leveraging edge compute to cache streaming content deeper in its network, closer to customers.

The broadcast feed is sent from the central origin to more than 200 Comcast edge compute facilities within its network that are running CDN software.

Distributing content across many more caching locations and network paths, keeps viewer request lines shorter, decreases traffic demand at each site and reduces reliance on limited network routes.

This approach supports higher video quality, greater reliability and lower lag during the biggest live events, ensuring viewers the best seat in the house. Comcast's open edge compute platform is a new model for the streaming industry and a launchpad for the future of Edge AI innovation.