Hello,
I have a "state of the state" sort of question for you guru's out there. If
I wanted to make a number of video streams available across an IP WAN
network, I have a couple of options. Unicast or Multicast. Unicast isn't
the most efficient method necessarily so my preference would be Multicast.
Now since it's been years since I've thought about Multicast, are there any
hot new technologies or methods available for video transmission over an IP
network? Thank you very much for your time.
Regards,
Christopher J. Wolff VP CIO
Broadband Laboratories, Inc.
http://www.bblabs.com
If you have control over the entire network, I would suggest
native multicast. This is used operationally by a number of providers
and is one candidate for the next generation of "cable" TV providers.
If you want to reach arbitrary people across networks, then you will
need to do either unicast or application layer multicast, depending on a bunch of things.
Broadcast quality TV is typically 3 to 6 Mbps of MPEG-2. You can
do pretty well now-a-days with 300 to 600 kbps of MPEG-4 or H.264.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
Hello,
I have a "state of the state" sort of question for you guru's out there. If
I wanted to make a number of video streams available across an IP WAN
network, I have a couple of options. Unicast or Multicast. Unicast isn't
the most efficient method necessarily so my preference would be Multicast.
Now since it's been years since I've thought about Multicast, are there any
hot new technologies or methods available for video transmission over an IP
network? Thank you very much for your time.
Regards,
Christopher J. Wolff VP CIO
Broadband Laboratories, Inc.
http://www.bblabs.com
T.M. Eubanks
e-mail : tme@multicasttech.com
http://www.multicasttech.com
Test your network for multicast :
http://www.multicasttech.com/mt/
Our New Video Service is in Beta testing
http://www.americafree.tv
I wanted to make a number of video streams available across an IP WAN
network, I have a couple of options. Unicast or Multicast. Unicast isn't
the most efficient method necessarily so my preference would be Multicast.
Depends on the exact nature of what you are doing and the network(s) in
question.
Some things to think about:
-Are you going to serve a mutlicast-aware audience directly?
-Are you thinking of feeding another server(farm) to retransmit?
Drawing from my own experiences, multicast is great for server-server
distribution. It is (can be) fantastic for large audiences IFF you
have a stable multicast-happy environment. IMHO multicast enivironments
just require a bit more care-and-feeding. Multicast networks
frequently need a strong human proponent too. Multicast is great
but is counter-intuitive for most support staffs to handle.
I have to be careful here because I could really get on a soapbox.
Unicast is the lowest common denominator and is far easier to deal
with in terms of transport peculularities. It is the only answer
the makes sense for an on-demand enviroment. (I've known of
groups to make scheduled multicast retransmissions, but you'd have
to be pretty serious for this in terms of the human dynamic)
-John
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Christopher,
1) Are your end users using TV's or PC's to view the streams ?
2) When you refer to "WAN" is the entire IP network under your
control ?
3) Are there any restrictions on conditional access or bandwidth
placed upon the implementation by the content owner ?
Cheers,
Ben.