As the popularity of live streaming continues to grow, so does the demand for digital content. This has created a huge need for reliable and cost-effective digital video content delivery. Live streaming is hosting simulcast streams from different cameras simultaneously on the same page in real-time. It’s an ideal solution for user-friendly websites such as news sites, educational platforms, and broadcast services that want to increase their reach and engage more viewers simultaneously.
You need to use a centralized content delivery network (CDN) to give your stream the best chance possible. A CDN is a software that caches and delivers digital media content from around the world to users more quickly than via direct connections between servers. This guide will explain everything you need to know about choosing the best live-streaming CDN in order to stream efficiently without lags or buffering issues.
What is a CDN?
A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers that caches and delivers digital media content to users. All the components that come together to form a CDN — servers, interconnections, and storage — are placed strategically around the world. This ensures that end users get consistent and faster-streaming media delivery regardless of location.
A CDN is ideal for live streaming because it can greatly reduce the time it takes to deliver streaming media from remote locations, resulting in less buffering time for viewers and shorter production schedules. A live-streaming CDN also has the added benefit of decreasing the load on your servers by serving the stream from the CDN rather than transferring everything back to your own servers for processing.
Benefits of Using a CDN
There are numerous benefits of using a CDN for your live-streaming purposes. Some of the most important benefits of using a CDN include:
– Increased Bandwidth: To stream content, you need a lot of bandwidth. With a CDN, you can stretch your bandwidth across hundreds or thousands of servers, which can let you stream more content with less bandwidth.
– Shorter Load Times: When you stream from a remote location, like Canada, the stream delay could be up to one or two seconds. When you stream from a CDN, the load time is greatly reduced because the CDN server has a cached version of the stream. This means that your viewers get a much more responsive experience.
– Reduced Server Load: When you stream from a remote location, like Canada, the load on your servers is increased significantly. By video streaming from a CDN, the load is greatly reduced because the CDN server has a cached version of the stream. This means that your viewers get a much more responsive experience.
How to Choose the Right Live-Streaming CDN for You
Every CDN works a little differently, and you’ll want to consider these factors when choosing the best live-streaming CDN for your needs. Start by looking at the following factors to find the ideal live-streaming CDN for your business.
– Network Reliability: If you live-stream to users all over the world, a reliable network is key. Look for a CDN with a large network of data centers to minimize the risk of a network outage.
– Speed: Similar to network reliability, you’ll want to avoid a CDN with low bandwidth speeds. However, you might not be as concerned about bandwidth for mobile users. Live-streaming CDNs usually have a lower standard bandwidth for streaming. Instead, you’ll want to look at how well the CDN performs during peak times.
– Price: This might sound obvious, but what you want to look for is the best price. Live-streaming requires a lot of bandwidth and will be used at peak times, so you want to ensure you’re getting the best deal.
Also, make sure the CDN you choose offers a variety of plans to match your budget.
Key Things to Look For in a Live-Streaming CDN
Here are some of the key things that you must look for in any live-streaming CDN:
– Location: This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth noting that each live-streaming CDN has its own location. Ideally, this location should be close to your own data center or cloud platform. If you live stream from multiple locations, you might want to create multiple CDNs to stream from.
– Network Reliability: The best live-streaming CDNs have an excellent reliability rate, with a 99.99% uptime. This means that they’re unlikely to have any downtime at all.
– Speed: This one seems like it should be self-explanatory, but your performance might be affected by the distance of your servers from the CDN. You’ll want to make sure your performance is unaffected.
If you keep the above-mentioned things in mind while looking for a live-streaming CDN, you’ll most likely arrive at the perfect match for your use case.
Conclusion
Live-streaming is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to share content online. It’s also becoming increasingly more difficult to create an engaging live-streaming experience. To make things easier, you’ll want to find a cost-effective and reliable live-streaming CDN that will allow you to stream your videos efficiently and at scale.
Now that you know what a CDN is and how it can help you deliver live-streaming content, you can choose the best one for your business. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to take a few other factors into account as well, including location, network reliability, and speed.
