With the 2012 summer games looming, there is a growing concern if the Internet will somehow melt down trying to deliver an Olympiad experience. And it?s not a crazy concern. The 2012 summer games, building off the online success of the 2008 Beijing games and the mobile success of the 2010 Vancouver games, portend to unshackle viewers from stationary screens. With mobile apps for Android and iOS, mobile-specific websites, and video formatted for smaller screens, the 2012 games mark a historic event in broadcast history?anytime, anywhere watching. Just look at a recent survey by TechBargains. According to their data, 46 percent of surveyed consumers will watch the summer games on their laptops, while 31% will watch on their tablets and 27% via their smartphones.
Thankfully, service providers like Limelight have been preparing for this eventuality. With core network upgrades and improved software, like Limelight Stream Anywhere, broadcasters can send one stream and convert it automatically for delivery to Android, iOS, Xbox, Roku, and a host of other connected devices. We?ve outfitted Limelight Video Platform to support the management and publishing of content for multiple devices. And the network itself has expanded by reaching into new locations like Latin America where online is sometimes the best way to watch video.
Global broadcasters have been testing Limelight?s new features and scale for a variety of events leading up to the 2012 games?the Royal Bank of Scottland Six Nations rugby championships, the European Football Championship, Indian Premier League Cricket, and Wimbledon. And Limelight performed brilliantly, easily handling peaks of up to 100gbps of sustained traffic. That would be like 100,000 people suddenly getting online to watch Avatar in HD all at once!
But those events pale in comparison to what?s coming for the 2012 games. There is nothing like the international summer games to unite people in a common goal, watching sporting events they would never watch before simply because of national pride. That portends to drive global online video traffic into the stratosphere.
So it?s probably pretty safe to say that smaller, regional Internet Service Providers may be unable to keep up with the demand for content. But that doesn?t impact Limelight. Providers like us terminate content on these networks. We don?t deliver down to the end-user. Here is how it works:
- Local users make a request for content
- The ISP network goes out to the Internet to find the content
- When the content owner is using a provider like Limelight, the request gets routed to the provider?s network and the provider sends the content back in response
- We hand the content back to the ISP who sends it to the user
So even when those local ISPs fail, Limelight continues to make the content available. How does that affect the average person watching? So let?s say that you are watching on your smartphone in your kitchen, having just walked in from work. Your phone connects automatically to your WiFi network (which gets Internet access from your local ISP). But the ISP is jammed with everyone in your neighborhood watching on a computer, tablet, or smart TV. The result for you is choppy, buffering, and stuttering video. But you could turn off the WiFi on your phone and connect back to the cellular network (let?s pretend it?s 4G) that may not be so congested. The result? Much improved video quality. Limelight makes sure the content is always there and available regardless of local ISP or network connectivity issues.
We have even seen this before?during the 2008 U.S. presidential inauguration some local ISPs overheated and some service providers failed. Limelight continued to deliver flawlessly, picking up users and eventually delivering to over a million concurrent viewers. Building on that ability and success, Limelight recently delivered record traffic, hitting almost 3tbps of sustained delivery. Back to my Avatar example, that?s like 2 million people jumping online to watch at the same time!
The 2012 summer games are truly a pivot point in a hyper-connected world. Playing a critical role along with other service providers in delivering the events online, Limelight will be in a unique position to leverage network along with the updated software and services to enable anytime, anywhere watching.
Will the 2012 games melt the Internet? Maybe, but Limelight?s standing ready with a really big fire extinguisher?
- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing for Digital Media. You can connect with Jason on Twitter?@jnthibeault.
Source: http://blog.limelight.com/2012/07/preparing-for-the-inevitable-anytime-anywhere-video/
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