Broadcast with reservation
Problem conditions
Our client often sends a team to other cities from where he needs to broadcast a live event. In locations where direct connection occurs, there are basically no problems with the Internet. Two or three Internet providers are always available to the broadcast team. These can be either cable providers or satellite and mobile Internet providers. Moreover, each channel has a good speed. What is the problem?
Providers may experience various technical problems. For example, for some reason, the routing table may begin to be rebuilt or, for example, switching to another satellite. At these moments, “downgrade” in the speed and value of RTT (ping) may be observed, which can lead to disruption of the broadcast. No one is immune from such technical interference.
Accordingly, our client asked whether all three channels could be used in a redundant manner to achieve a high degree of broadcast uninterruption.
Proposed solution
For a successful solution we need two apps:
- SRT Bonding Agent (source side)
- SRT MiniServer (receiver side)
Let’s explain how it works.
SRTBondingAgent (SBA for shortly) is a program that receives an incoming SRT stream from an encoder and sends it further along all available communication channels. In the settings you can specify the degree of redundancy. For our picture, this will be the value 3. This means that each incoming data packet will be sent 3 times: a copy to each channel.
SRT MiniServer will receive these 3 streams and assemble the original stream from them.
Thus, even if a break occurs on two channels, the SRT MiniServer will receive the necessary data.
Let us note one more feature of SBA: the ability to specify the server address in several options. For example, this applies if one of the providers organizes a VPN in which the SRT MiniServer has a “private” IP that is not visible to other providers.
Summary
The described scheme allows you to organize a broadcast with the required level of uninterruption.
If this task is relevant to you, then you can test the described scheme completely free of charge by downloading trial versions of the products from our website.
If you need advice, we will be happy to help you. Contact support@garaninapps.com
