How Much Real Experience Improvement from Edge Computing for Video Conferences?

Edge computing clearly will have its uses. But does edge computing improve experience for users of video conferencing apps? Specifically, can edge computing improve the quality of all-to-all conferencing sessions? 

It might be claimed that “a relevant use case for edge networks is boosting the quality of video webinars and the reliability of video conferencing calls.” 

Perhaps webinars might benefit. That is a point-to-multipoint communication, for the most part, and edge caching might plausibly improve experience by reducing some amount of latency on the downstream presenter-to-attendee links. But that is an arguable point, at least to the best of my knowledge. 

I’m much more skeptical about edge computing boosting the user experience for video conferences. To be sure, that is possibly true under certain circumstances. When all the users of a specific webinar or video conference call are within the premises, a single local area or a single metro area, edge computing should improve experience. 

It seems unclear whether similar advantages would be possible across large nations or globally, even if local edge caching were available at every end point area, but that might be my own layman’s ignorance. 

Edge caching works best when it is possible to predict what non-real-time content might be requested, which is why edge caching works for streaming video or audio services using content delivery networks. It is quite another challenge to optimize point-to-point and all-to-all communications when the content cannot be predicted, nor the locations. 

In other words, video conferencing is a dynamic and real-time interaction that seemingly benefits little from edge caching. 

Video conferencing is a point-to-point or “many-to-many” session, unlike watching a Netflix video, which can effectively be point-to-multipoint and therefore amenable to edge caching. 

Even when one can predict the day and time of a video conference, perhaps even the universe of potential participants, one cannot “cache” the content, which is live and unpredictable. 

Someone with a deeper understanding of how edge caching actually can improve video conferencing sessions might know how this is possible, but I cannot actually figure out why edge caching improves live “all-to-all” conferencing sessions, with the possible exception of executing the platform software on a device or locally.