Launching a streaming service involves a variety of technical issues. From choosing a video hosting provider to creating your app and website, it’s an extensive process.
But in the absence of a good user experience, even the most well-designed streaming platform won’t be able to retain viewers and generate revenue.
Whether you start a live or video-on-demand service, you must ensure that your content reaches viewers in an instant. With so many OTT platforms to choose from, today’s viewers have no patience for latency and buffering delays.
This only underscores the importance of using video CDNs to speed up content delivery and provide a seamless viewing experience.
What is a CDN?
A content delivery network (CDN) is a geographically distributed set of servers that accelerate the delivery of Web content by bringing it closer to where the user is. Data centers around the world use caching, a process of temporarily storing copies of files so you can access Internet content faster from Web-enabled devices or browsers through servers near you. CDNs cache content such as Web pages, images and videos in proxy servers near your physical location. This allows you to perform actions such as watching movies, downloading software, checking your bank balance, posting on social media, or making purchases without waiting for content to load.
How to choose a reliable video CDN:
- Reliability
Video CDNs route user requests to the nearest edge server. It helps reduce the burden on the source server and prevents it from being overwhelmed by too many requests. In addition, it eliminates the hassle of running out of network bandwidth. Likewise, caching files across multiple servers ensures seamless failover. The combination of these factors protects your streaming platform from slowdowns and crashes.
- Scalability
With a video CDN, your streaming platform is always able to handle more traffic. It takes the burden off the source servers, thus preventing system crashes due to unprecedented traffic surges. It is especially useful for worry-free live streaming.
- Quality
One of the main benefits of CDN video delivery is that it reduces the round-trip time (RTT) to and from the source server. Delivering requested content from a server close to the end user reduces latency and buffering time. This, in turn, enhances the viewing experience.
- Security
Modern video CDNs have sophisticated security features, including DDoS and malware protection. It adds another layer of security to the streaming workflow and helps protect your content assets. Given the increasingly volatile threat landscape on the Internet, helping to protect websites is a key CDN requirement. Today’s most advanced content delivery networks have made information security a core competency, offering unique cloud-based solutions. CDNs should protect content providers and users by mitigating a variety of attacks without malicious entities compromising delivery and availability.
Choosing the right video CDN
Choosing a video CDN is one of the most important decisions you’ll make before launching a streaming service. While OTT giants like Netflix have the ability to build proprietary video CDNs, newcomers may have to choose from among available CDN services.
Also, keep in mind the location of your target audience. You want to use a CDN with edge servers close to the audience. after opening the CDN and connecting the domain, simply add the corresponding CNAME record at the domain service provider to enable acceleration. the CDN console provides access control policy configuration, node cache expiration time adjustment, HTTP request optimization, and HTTPS certificate configuration.
Xmediatv offers a wide range of solutions to help content creators and publishers start their OTT journey. Contact us to schedule a demo.
