G

F
E

Streaming
White Paper

A shift to multi-screen
and mobile

Viewing habits of consumers are shifting dramatically

emerging video-on-demand platforms are disrupting
legacy broadcast distribution, while mobile video consumption keeps increasing.
According to Bell Labs1, video-on-demand (VOD)
services will account for 77% of daily consumption by
2020, compared to 33% today. BusinessInsider.com
similarly reports that, over the last two years, the U.S.
mobile video audience increased 77%, adding 36 million
more viewers.2

Application

Device

Mobile

iOS 3.0+

For websites and video streaming services, this means

cross-device and multi-screen compatibly of video
streaming are no longer optional considerations. They
are essential in order to reach and engage audiences on
any device, anywhere.
To enable the future of TV anywhere, EdgeCast maintains
a global infrastructure that is built for high-volume,
device-agnostic HTTP streaming (see table 1 below).

HLS Live

HLS VOD

HDS Live

HDS VOD

Smooth

Android 4+
Microsoft Silverlight 2+
Safari
Desktop

Adobe Air 2+
Adobe Flash Player 10.1+
OVP Silverlight

OTT

ROKU

Samsung Smart TV
Apple TV

STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

TABLE 1 Device and OS overview for EdgeCasts HTTP Streaming

Bell Labs Video Traffic Study 2012

BI Report: The State of Mobile Video 2012

The Growth of HTTP Streaming

Companies in the online streaming space have always

had a wide variety of platforms to choose from, though
many have been incompatible. Even though there are
still plenty of options, the protocol in which media is
delivered is converging toward HTTP. The market is
turning away from proprietary protocols for content
delivery and embracing open standards, such as MPEGDASH. Although MPEG-DASH is currently just a specification and is not fully complete, the MPEG-DASH-like
specifications are seeing a tremendous shift in their
favor. These similar specifications include Adobes HTTP
Dynamic Streaming (HDS), Apples HTTP Live Streaming
(HLS), and Microsofts Smooth Streaming, among others.

As streaming technology evolved, many of the emerging

HTTP protocols began to address mobile access. The
explosive growth of connected devices such as phones
and tablets created a market that did not have a protected video streaming solution. Many manufactures
looked to Adobe to introduce Flash, the most popular
format on personal computers, to mobile devices.
However, for many reasons, among them hardware
limitations, numerous chipsets, and several businessrelated disagreements, a common Flash runtime across
connected devices never became dominant.

STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

XBox

EdgeCasts Streaming Solution

Graphic 1 By placing live and on-demand streams at

the edge of our global networks, EdgeCast ensures the
best possible quality, with minimal buffering and no feed
or broadcast drops. Heres how it works.

Content

FMS

Ingestion Point

Live

ENCODER
010
101

HTTP

HLS / HDS / SMOOTH

Transmuxer

FMS

On-Demand
1

Edge Server

End-User Client

2
HTTP
HLS / HDS / SMOOTH

Customer Origin

ECOrigin

On-demand Streaming

Publishers encoder sends live content ingest signal

to the closest EdgeCast publishing point.

Publishers encoder sends content to an EdgeCast

customer origin server.

With Server Side Archive (SSA), content is maintained

in servers for future access.

EdgeCast edge retrieves published content from

origin server.

EdgeCast maintains the live connection and routes

the stream to the edge.

EdgeCast maintains the content and routes the

stream to the edge.

EdgeCast can pull pre-encoded/pre-segmented

streams from customer origin.

Optional Step
1

Cloud transmuxing can transform the container

format to support multiple devices and formats.
Supported operations:
RTMP HDS + HLS and Smooth HLS .

Shared Step
2

End-user client is directed to the optimal edge

in the EdgeCast global CDN using Anycast global
traffic direction.

Live Stream Flow

On-demand Content Flow
Optional/Shared Steps for Live and On-demand

STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

Living Streaming

In an effort to continue to evolve streaming technology,

EdgeCast has built out a robust HTTP Streaming network
that is dedicated to video distribution.
EdgeCasts streaming infrastructure model (graphic 1)
supports emerging HTTP protocols, while still offering
current industry standards and features with proven
security implementations enabling content producers
to embrace the next generation of streaming technology.
According to Bell Labs Video Traffic Study 2012, service providers
that adopt a distributed IP edge with CDN caches can lower
total cost of ownership of their network by more than 33%
compared to those that maintain a centralized architecture.

This ingest location also has the ability to transmux

(change the format of a video or audio file while preserving some or all of the streams from the original file;
see table 2). The content is then cached at the edge in
over 13 countries, tapping into the traditional performance
benefits of the global reach of one of the worlds most
powerful content delivery networks.
The Economics of Transmuxing
Transmuxing allows customers to turn one source file into
three streaming formats, eliminating the need to encode all
formats at the source cutting storage costs by .

Video-on-demand Streaming
EdgeCast Streaming is available for both on-demand
and live delivery. All Streaming products follow a similar
ingest-to-edge tier infrastructure, applicable to new
products and old. In this new setup, the input source
can be an encoder or customer storage, ingested at one
of EdgeCasts many SuperPOP locations.

STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

EdgeCast SuperPOPs
EdgeCasts network consists of strategically placed points of
presence across the globe. Located close to primary Internet
exchange points, SuperPOPs have massive amounts of computing
and caching power that enables fast delivery of rich media
content ensuring a superior viewing experience for users all
around the world.

Source Format

Ingest

Flash RTMP

Push

Flash RTMP

Pull

Microsoft Smooth

Push

Encoding at
customer origin

Pull

HLS
Live

HLS
VOD

HDS
Live

HDS
VOD

TABLE 2 Transmuxing at the Edge supported for the above formats

EdgeCast supports live commercial encoders that both

encode and serve HTTP segments. The EdgeCast CDN
pulls the segments into the network and delivers the
video to the end user anywhere in the world. This method
of delivery supports any digital rights management (DRM)
or encryption that the customers encoder enforces.
EdgeCast can also deliver VOD content from a customers
origin if the customers origin either supports a segmenting
device or if the video is stored pre-segmented.

Live Streaming

To deliver live HTTP, EdgeCast can ingest one of two ingest

formats directly: either Microsoft Smooth or Flash RTMP.
Each of these formats ingests to a specific POP that is
geographically closest to the customers encoder. If the
ingest type is RTMP, the stream can be played back in
HDS, HLS, or RTMP. HDS is a new HTTP streaming format
developed by Adobe. It is a fragmented MP4 format and
offers greater functionality then HLS.
HDS is intended for playback in a Flash player or application that contains the Flash runtime environment
and can deliver DRM content, encrypted content, and
may contain multiple audio and subtitle tracks. Live
content can be stored for future access by using Server
Side Archive (SSA).

Platforms
Flash

Smooth

EdgeCast offers an Adobe Flash platform with a wide

selection of essential features and security enhancements.
This platform can deliver both VOD and live content using
Live StreamCast technology. Playback requires a player
to support a specific FC_Subscribe call, which is currently
supported through JW Player and OSMF with a plugin
that EdgeCast supplies, either dynamic or static.

EdgeCast also offers a Microsoft Smooth Streaming

platform for delivery of Smooth content. Smooth requires
the Silverlight plugin for playback on Mac OS X, Windows
7, as well as earlier versions of Windows. Windows 8
devices support Smooth Streaming via a run-time
environment that must be built into the application.
Microsoft Smooth can be delivered in both live and
video-on-demand environments.

Live StreamCast
Live StreamCast supports token authentication with
many variables, including GeoIP restriction, time, referrer,
whitelist or blacklist IPs, and much more. Live StreamCast also supports Dynamic SWF Verification, which
requires player registration with EdgeCast to allow access
to the content, protecting other players from accessing
unauthorized content. Live StreamCast also supports
Encrypted Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMPE), which
is an encrypted stream that only a Flash runtime environment can unencrypt. EdgeCast supports RTMPE
version 3, 4, and 5. Live Streamcast uses a live authorization key to protect the publishing point, only available
to the account owner or a designated user. EdgeCast
CDN accounts can be set up with a live authorization
key unique to every string.
Flash VOD
Flash VOD playback contains the same features listed
for Live StreamCast: Dynamic SWF Verification, RTMPE,
and token authentication. Customers can use either
EdgeCasts or their own origin storage to house their
on-demand content. EdgeCast will pull the content
from the origin into a POP and cache the content; all
subsequent requests for the content will be delivered
from the edge.

Smooth Live
Live streams use a tokenized publishing URI to prevent
unauthorized access. This differs from Flash Live
Streamcast in that the actual URI is tokenized, whereas
in Flash the URL just has a key appended. Live streaming
features DVR capabilities of up to 180 minutes per
publishing point, with the option of transmuxing the
Smooth stream into HLS.
Smooth VOD
Smooth can deliver VOD content from either EdgeCasts
or the customers origin storage. To deliver from the
EdgeCast origin, media is simply uploaded to the customers storage account. To deliver Smooth content
from the customers origin, the origin server must support
IIS 4.1, or a compatible Smooth segmentation service.

Conclusion
Cross-device usage and mobile video consumption
are driving mobile growth. According to Cisco3, global
mobile video usage will increase 25-fold between 2011
and 2016, accounting for over 70% of total mobile data
traffic by the end of the forecast period. EdgeCasts
next-generation streaming network enables content
producers and distributors to reach viewers anywhere
and on any device, fully taking advantage of the rapid
expansion of mobile entertainment.
STREAMING | WHITE PAPER

EdgeCasts Streaming Solution

Cisco VNI Mobile 2012

Santa Monica, CA
edgecast.com