Essential Guide:  Hybrid CDN

April 1st 2020 - 12:05 PM
Tony Orme, Editor at The Broadcast Bridge

OTT delivery continues to expand to meet the relentless growing consumer demand. This trend shows no chance of abating and technologists are continually looking to innovation to scale infrastructures accordingly. But what does it mean to scale OTT? Where is the infrastructure? And who owns it?

This Essential Guide uncovers the inner workings of an OTT delivery system and explains the challenges to be solved. We investigate how programs are streamed to viewers and the technology involved in making this work over the public internet. This is not as easy as it may first seem as IP was never designed to stream video and audio over a network.

The uncompromising nature of video and audio streaming brings new and interesting challenges for technologists to solve. Low latency and high continuous data-rate availability are just a few of the demands broadcasters are making on a network that was only originally designed to exchange asynchronous data.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are a relatively new concept for broadcasters to understand. But how do these differ from an Ethernet or IP network? And how do they fit into the framework of the public internet? This Essential Guide uncovers these mysteries to help broadcasters make the best possible decisions about their infrastructure designs and commitments.

Multiple CDN models exist, especially when considering public and private solutions. The fine line between cost and delivery quality is discussed, especially as viewers continue to demand a high quality of service from internet delivery.

The sponsors perspective, provided by Vecima, discusses their “OTT Scale – Maturity Quadrant” model to describe the relationship between scale and service maturity. Using the model, decision-makers can clearly see the potential technical challenges and opportunities along the path towards an industry leading service.

This Essential Guide is a must for anybody wanting to understand the technicalities of OTT delivery and the CDN models available. Download this Essential Guide today.

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