eCDN & P2P: Next-Gen Enterprise Networks
Provide corporate video communications as if you stand in front of your colleagues
Interviews, webinars, negotiations, e-meetings — these are all crucial business activities in the everyday life of a company. But nothing makes employees more distracted and less motivated than high-latency streams or slow-buffering videos when they have to communicate fast and seamlessly across offices and teams.
Ready-made Product or a Tailored Solution?
For people who are used to consume the flawless video in Netflix-like quality, reliable corporate streams are the must-have solution they expect. When it comes to choosing what kind of enterprise video conferencing product or software to imply, engineer considers many factors: how many devices will join the stream, what is the internet bandwidth, what is the video bitrate, etc. According to the parameters they have, teams commonly use solutions like Zoom or Google Hangouts.
However, if the number of devices grows, and to maintain the appropriate video speed and quality, companies may use specific webcast video delivery software, mostly if this is not regularly needed. And if even this is not enough, if they still face issues with existing video conferencing solutions, when there are thousands of viewers and regular video streams, it’s right to build eCDN infrastructure.
What Is eCDN?
eCDN is a content delivery network that uses the network infrastructure (proxies, caching servers, data centers). It caches and delivers content to the user while eliminating delays that may happen due to the low bandwidth of the Internet port.
Like a traditional CDN, it improves the performance and the speed of web applications. However, there are a few differences.
eCDN vs CDN
At its core, CDN is also a network of servers and data centers, but its purpose is to distribute content to the general public on the Internet. At the same time, eCDNs are used by large companies to deliver private content over their intranets. In this case, proxies and caching servers can be located in their own LAN or WAN, in a dedicated data center or in cloud storage.
CDN bandwidth is very high — many dozens or even hundreds of Gigabits per second. This is achieved through huge investments in equipment, which are in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.
eCDNs do not come on the same scale as regular CDNs, so they are considerably cheaper. But as the “younger brothers” of traditional CDNs, they use special hardware and software for the corporate network that runs on technologies similar to regular CDNs.
Notable that in some cases it’s possible to combine the advantages of both types of content delivery networks. As for really big companies, employees can be located in dozens of different offices, and also work from home or be on business trips around the world. eCDN is best in delivering video to employees in the office within the corporate network. And for remote workers who are using home Internet, public wi-fi networks, the Internet on a train, in a hotel or at partners’ office the best way to receive video is a traditional CDN.
Why Videoconferencing is So Difficult to Organize Without eCDN?
Every time a webcast is scheduled, all employees connect to the network and try to watch the video simultaneously. Since good video quality requires 1–3 Mbps, 300 employees will need 300–900 Mbps! Could a corporate network provide such speeds via the available Internet uplink? Hardly. Even if the provider is technically able to set the office network speed at 1 Gb/s or more, it would be unreasonably expensive.
But what if there are thousands of employees? What if they are located in different offices? If the video source is located in one of the offices, it will be overloaded with thousands of requests for a video stream. No corporate network can handle it, technically it’s just impossible.
We all sometimes face problems playing videos on the web, when the connection is slow and unstable. Basically, the same thing happens inside the office if the company does not use eCDN while making video communications. And these seemingly simple technical problems with video, in turn, create deeper problems at the business level:
● Video communication is constantly interrupted, so it’s impossible to listen to the content properly. Information perception suffers, viewers are tired and irritated
● The video cannot be watched in Full HD, the visual quality is low and depressing, details are blurred
As a result, the goal of e-meetings is not achieved. Employees are stressed, dissatisfied with the technical difficulties, and are not eager to repeat this experience next time.
Troubleshooting Techniques: How eCDN Works
To avoid such network overloads, eCDN offers a couple of solutions.
1. Server caching
This method is very similar to the classic CDN, but in this case, there is a local server installed inside the corporate network. All its traffic is directed to this server, afterward, the content is uploaded to it only once, and then it is distributed to all employees.
Pros:
● An old solution to a problem that has been in use for decades.
Cons:
● Requires server installation on all sites that leads to additional costs.
● Requires a specific configuration to direct all employees to the correct cache server.
● Capacity is limited by the number of servers deployed.
2. Multicast
This solution is used by IP Multicasting to distribute data over the network. Corporate network routers and switches are configured to redistribute video packets that are sent to a dedicated address. Then each device receives recovered video packets and plays the video.
It is important that routers and switches support the Multicasting standard. Otherwise, there may be network congestion or data loss.
Pros:
● Very low latency can be maintained.
Cons:
● Requires compatible network components.
● Requires proper configuration of multicast subnets.
● Requires a dedicated non-browser client that can use multicast streaming.
● Requires advanced knowledge of network architectures, programming and routing protocols.
Sounds quite complicated? Good news — there is a way to make eCDN work even better and execute your corporate video communication as if you stand in front of your employees.
Why P2P eCDN Is Even Better Than eCDN
Peer-to-peer eCDN is the next stage of eCDN evolution. It turns every device on the corporate network into a miniature eCDN server. Meaning, without any additional investment, you get a network of the same quality that only large companies can afford, having invested millions in special equipment and software. You actually continue to use the same computers you already have, and that’s it.
How does it work? Almost every modern device or browser supports Google’s WebRTC protocol. It allows two devices to connect directly to each other and exchange content. This technology doesn’t require any action from the viewers. They don’t need to install anything on their laptops or mobile phones.
When many people in the same office watch the same video, this technology forms a content delivery network from their devices, so the need for an Internet bandwidth drops 10 times! After all, now devices do not need to download videos from an external network when there are hundreds of sources around in the local network.
Pros:
● No physical installation needed.
● Video speed & quality are increased with each new viewer.
● No need to download special software to view the content.
● Videos can be watched on any device, even a personal one.
● This method allows companies to use existing network capacity and doesn’t require its modernization.
Cons:
● Requires a WebRTC compatible browser (92.9% of all browsers are globally compatible, IE is not supported).
Recap
If you want to quickly figure out the question without going into details, then you should know that eCDN is better for internal use, while traditional CDN is better for delivering content outside your corporate network.
But in fact, everything is a little more complicated. Since the quality of video streaming is a key factor to the success of all business processes today, you just have to find more flexible options with minimal downsides.
Talk to our experts to learn more about P2P CDN and P2P eCDN workflow and benefits https://cutt.ly/bd75CxM
