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Using DVR with CDN

When broadcasting/streaming live for viewers from all over the world, the following questions arise:

  • How to ensure viewers can access the content, providing the best possible user experience?
  • How to reduce the response time of cached content?
  • How to reduce the load on the Origin server?

With Flussonic Media Server, you can implement DVR-related scenarios with CDN. You can use Akamai or any other CDN provider. CDN captures streams from Flussonic, caches media playlists and segments, acting as a client towards Flussonic. CDN defines caching rules all by itself. Then players request media playlists and segments directly from CDN. It is no difference for CDN whether to deliver live or VOD content.

Note

Configuration for the Origin servers to work with CDNs (like Akamai) does not require any special settings or options. However, you may find url_prefix option useful. It is used to proxy the segments for CDN.Refer to Configuring Flussonic Media Server to learn more about the url_prefix option.

Suppose, our Origin server has the following configuration:


stream example-stream {
  url_prefix https://CDN-DOMAIN;
  input m4s://FLUSSONIC-IP/STREAM_NAME;
  dvr /storage 1d;
}

where:

  • https://CDN-DOMAIN — prefix to address the individual video segments of an HLS or DASH segment-based playlist.
  • FLUSSONIC-IP — the IP address of your Flussonic Media Server
  • STREAM_NAME — the name of the stream

In this case CDN pulls the stream from our Origin server with enabled DVR archive.