Streaming on the TANDBERG Content Server

Introduction

This article relates to Cisco TelePresence Content Server.

Q. Streaming on the TANDBERG Content Server

A. In this article you will find

• Multicast streaming support

• How is multicast streaming different from unicast on the Content Server?

• Catering for a large number of simultaneous unicast clients

• Flash media delivery

For more information, see the online help topic, Adding and editing Media server configurations.

Multicast streaming support

Multicast steaming is supported for Windows Media and MPEG-4 (Quicktime) formats for live conferences hosted directly off the Content Server.

Note: For multicast streaming to function correctly, a valid and available IP address must be used and the network needs to be multicast enabled. The multicast address range is from 224.0.0.1 to 239.255.255.255.

How is multicast streaming different from unicast on the Content Server?

Unicast streaming has one client per stream, and that stream travels from the server to client. Therefore the demand on the server increases for each concurrent viewer. Each viewer's experience is unique. An example of this is on-demand movies, such as in-room movies provided by hotels. The viewer usually has the option to seek through the clip as desired.

Multicast streaming can have multiple clients per stream. The stream is made available by network devices (switches and routers) as required. The viewers' experience is not unique because many viewers can subscribe to the same multicast session. The viewer does not have the option to seek though the clip.

The demand on the server is constant regardless of how many concurrent viewers there are because the stream is duplicated by switches and routers as necessary.

Note: Multicast delivery requires a multicast-enabled network. See the topic Adding and editing Media server configurations in the online help.

Catering for a large number of simultaneous unicast clients

There are two options:

• Use an external media server dedicated to providing just the media streams for the viewing clients. This means it can be provisioned with a large network bandwidth and won't have competition for resources from other applications running on the machine (unlike the Content Server, which also has to transcode video and record calls, for example).

• The other option is to use a Content Distribution Network, such as Highwinds or Akamai. These service providers host the media on their network and can deal with very large numbers of users.

Flash media delivery

Delivery for Flash video is by http/progressive download, or by streaming using an external streaming server. Currently only Wowza (version 1.7.2 or higher) is supported for streaming Flash media.

Note: Flash player 9 update 3 or higher is required to play Flash media.

Related Information

• Technical Support & Documentation - Cisco Systems

Revision History