<\/a>Golf broadcasters have experimented with drone cameras to offer viewers a unique point of view.<\/p><\/div>\n
In essence, you are creating an edge network, distributed servers to stream content as close to the end user as possible. In the event of sudden scaling, your edge network can help radically reduce the latency by directing incoming requests, through load balancing, to the closest server (instead of having all requests coming to a single location).<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, just implementing more servers in more locations doesn\u2019t solve all the problems, such as capacity overrun. What happens when traffic increases suddenly and one of your edge nodes gets flooded? Although it doesn\u2019t affect your entire audience, viewers connecting to those servers will have a poor experience with your stream, causing you to lose long-term customers and revenue.<\/p>\n
The ideal solution is to use elastic, cloud-based resources as your edge network. They enable you to spin up more servers to handle sudden increases in connection requests, wherever your users are. Alternatively, you can employ a commercial CDN that already has elasticity built into its network.<\/p>\n
Protecting and Securing Your Content
\n<\/strong>Addressing sudden scale isn\u2019t your only challenge to providing a great QoE for your audience. What\u2019s the point of an elastic, edge-based network to accommodate flash crowds if people can\u2019t get to your site or, worse, end up watching a pirated version of your event on some other Website?<\/p>\nEnsuring a great QoE also entails protecting your content from a variety of potential security threats:<\/p>\n
\n- Unauthorized access<\/li>\n
- Stream interception<\/li>\n
- Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Unauthorized Access<\/strong>
\nIn most cases, you\u2019ve probably licensed your content for viewing only in a specific geography (or, if you are the content owner, you want to limit licensees to specific geographies), which means that you need a way to restrict access. The most common way is to use geo-fencing, in which the incoming user\u2019s IP address is compared against a geo database. Location is extracted and compared against a set of rules to either grant or deny access.<\/p>\nUnfortunately, that doesn\u2019t stop someone from copying your stream onto their Website (without the geo-restrictions). To prevent this, you\u2019ll need to use URL tokenization. In this security mechanism, your player will make a request for the stream with an additional parameter (the token). The server delivering the stream will decode the token to ascertain authorization: if it\u2019s a match, the stream will be delivered; if it\u2019s not, it won\u2019t. The token has to be created using a shared secret that only you (and the media server) know, which makes it impossible to forge.<\/p>\n
Stream Interception
\n<\/strong>Let\u2019s say that nefarious hackers have figured out a way to pirate your stream. By transmitting it \u201cin the clear,\u201d you\u2019ve given them the ability to duplicate it and display it on their own Website. But, if your stream uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), even if they intercept your content, they won\u2019t be able to decode it.<\/p>\nDDoS<\/strong>
\nWhat could be worse than your users\u2019 coming to your Website only to be unable to connect to it? That\u2019s what might happen if you were to come under a DDoS attack before or during your live streaming. Such an attack, flooding your server with bogus requests, could prevent everyone from enjoying the content. But, with the right security measures in place, such as a cloud-based DDoS-mitigation solution, you can successfully scrub the bad traffic out and ensure that users are able to connect to your live stream.<\/p>\nIn the Future, It Will Be Like \u2018Being There\u2019
\n<\/strong>Making the experience more engaging with second-screen and broadcast-quality video is only the first step in redefining the live-streamed sports event. The ultimate goal? To give viewers the feeling that they are actually at the event.<\/p>\nBroadcasters are exploring the use of more camera angles and placement of cameras. \u201cDirt cams\u201d pop out of the pitcher\u2019s mound in baseball broadcasts, robot and drone-mounted cameras have appeared at golf events, and NFL broadcasts include views from goal-line markers. It is inevitable that viewers will want the option to select viewing angles during a broadcast. How exciting would it be to watch a 4th-and-goal play from the goal-line cam or a potential tournament-winning birdie putt from the robot cam on the green?<\/p>\n
An Engaging Future
\n<\/strong>The drive to provide a new, exciting, and interactive \u201cbroadcast-quality\u201d online video experience for live sports coverage is having an unintended consequence: it\u2019s expanding audiences globally. And the combination of online delivery and global audiences introduces a considerable challenge: how to mitigate sudden scale and provide the best possible QoE.<\/p>\nBroadcasters can prepare themselves to not only handle sudden traffic spikes but also protect their content and ensure availability, all in the name of maximizing the QoE. With a flexible infrastructure, elastic capacity like that offered through a commercial CDN, and proven security features, live-streamed sports events can be assured an engaging future of interactive, online, anytime video that meets the expectations of audiences around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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