Live streaming events
Multicast is the optimal method for securely streaming live video events to large, distributed audiences. Multicast is used by enterprises in use cases such as executive announcements, quarterly earnings calls and product releases. It is the preferred network communication method for delivering live video because it does not depend on client machine resources and efficiently utilizes network bandwidth.
Multicast Efficiently Manages Network Bandwidth
Live video can require a substantial amount of network bandwidth when using the traditional unicast or peer-to-peer approaches. With these methods, all users request the video from either the original source or from a local peer, meaning that in order to deliver the video to each viewer, a new copy of the video is published to the network. Publishing duplicates around the same time increases the load on the network. The heavy workload involved in streaming such high volumes of video data can bring a network to its knees and crash a webcast.
Multicast minimizes network traffic by eliminating unicast and peer-to-peer, point-to-point style of communication between viewers and the video source. Instead, the video is simply pushed to the network ONCE and all viewers subscribed to that multicast channel automatically receive the video without the need for republication or duplicates.
It’s like television. If you select a particular TV channel, you automatically receive the TV content being sent. The TV providers are not resending each TV frame for each viewer tuned in, or relying on your local neighborhood peers to be online so they can republish the content to you. They send it once over the air and the viewers tuned in automatically get the content. Simple and efficient. When has the size of Super Bowl audience ever crashed the over the air TV broadcast signal? It hasn’t, and the same principle is how multicast delivers content to your viewers in a scalable and efficient manner.
Preemptive Performance Management with Network Analytics
The Ramp Multicast Engine (RME) takes intelligent network management a step further by providing network analytics before and during a live event. Multicast as a protocol automatically configures a custom network tree best suited to handle viewer demands. Ramp Multicast Engine’s analytics provide additional foresight, enabling network administrators to make additional network adjustments and optimizations so they can resolve issues before they appear.
With Ramp Multicast Engine, administrators can see their network on a per IP basis, a CIDR block or a group, with metrics including percent packet loss and percent buffering. This changes the entire support model from one where administrators are just waiting for tickets to come in, to one where they can monitor the network before and during a live event to get in front of any potential performance roadblocks. Ramp is the only solution that allows customers to get in front and fix issues before a live broadcast.
