Image & Video

New BBR-Copilot Fixes TikTok Live Streaming Congestion Issues

Researchers solve BBR's two key problems for live video at scale.

Deep Dive

BBR powers TikTok Live but struggles in live streaming. Researchers propose BBR-Copilot, an auxiliary module that fixes BBR's startup and steady-state issues by generating accurate bandwidth samples via extra data over QUIC. Testbed evaluations show performance gains.

Key Points
  • BBR faces two key issues in live streaming: cannot exit startup phase (causing loss) and underutilizes bandwidth in steady state.
  • BBR-Copilot sends smart extra data over QUIC to generate accurate bandwidth samples.
  • Testbed evaluation shows BBR-Copilot significantly improves BBR performance for platforms like TikTok Live.

Why It Matters

Better live streaming quality for billions of users on TikTok, Tencent, and other platforms relying on BBR.