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0 pointsvlan01y ago0 comments

Bandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze.

Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

dylan6041y ago· 3 in thread

> But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money

Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming.

Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder

Jakob1y ago

It’s actually not harder thanks to HLS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static files and can be very low latency.

If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes harder, but everything else is thankfully solved.

The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0 views in one second and millions in the next. Even with static content delivery that leads to all kinds of issues.

dylan6041y ago

> but everything else is thankfully solved.

well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at Netflix as they can't figure it out.

ta12431y ago

> they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming

And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window.

Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead of you it's not spoilt).

DanielHB1y ago

There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access.

Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.

Symmetry1y ago

That's why companies doing streaming at less than Google's scale can pay Aakami or a company like them to do that, caching copies at datacenters around the world close to the people doing the watching.

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