Some of my friends have televisions but never use them. Instead, they get almost 100 percent of their video diet from the Internet, streaming what they want to watch from services such as Hulu (News - Alert) or YouTube.

Streaming video over the Internet has exploded since the rise of over-the-top video services and the emergence of tablet computers. Video now accounts for much of the Web’s traffic as big video files are moved back and forth across networks.

Pushing video through the network every time a user wants to watch a show is not a very efficient technique for serving video content, however. It slows down networks and adds latency both to streaming video and other services that must share those networks.

One technique that has been developed to meet this challenge is transparent caching.

Transparent caching is the simple idea of storing content on the network edge near the consumer instead of pushing the files across the network. A cache of popular content can be stored near users, making streaming video much more efficient from a network perspective.

Not only does transparent caching reduce network clog, it also improves the quality of experience for the users as there is less likelihood of latency and other service issues.

Quality of experience is consistently rated most important by consumers, making delivery of crisp video an important consideration.

Through transparent caching, service providers can substantially improve the user experience by significantly reducing the impact of traffic traveling the network.

Helping service providers get a better grasp on the streaming video landscape, an Oct. 10 webinar by Qwilt and TMCnet will examine over-the-top video and both its challenges and opportunities.

Specifically, the webinar will focus on how the over-the-top video ecosystem and its players are evolving, how transparent caching improves the user experience, and how to identify and measure factors that affect subscriber quality of experience.

Video is not something service providers can afford to ignore. Increasingly, over-the-top video is playing a large role in consumer behavior, and providers need both to manage the bandwidth needs and ensure that their customers are getting the quality of video experience they expect.

Buffering is being tolerated by consumers less with each passing day. Service providers can’t ignore the challenge.