Delivery Network Specifications

Building Reliable Delivery Infrastructure

Professional webcasting at scale requires robust delivery infrastructure that can handle concurrent viewer loads while maintaining consistent quality. These specifications guide CDN selection, architecture design, and operational requirements that support reliability standards.

CDN Requirements

Geographic Coverage

CDN selection should match audience distribution. Global webcasts require CDN presence across major regions including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific at minimum. Edge server density should provide acceptable last-mile latency for target audiences. Multi-CDN strategies provide resilience for critical events.

Capacity and Performance

CDN capacity should accommodate peak concurrent viewer projections with headroom for unexpected demand. Historical data on viewer patterns should inform capacity planning. CDN should provide real-time scaling without requiring advance provisioning for reasonable traffic variations.

Protocol Support

CDN must support required streaming protocols including HLS and DASH. Low-latency protocol support (LL-HLS, LL-DASH) required for interactive applications. CDN edge should support chunked transfer encoding for optimal low-latency delivery.

Origin Architecture

Redundancy Requirements

Origin infrastructure must include redundancy for continuous operation. Active-active or active-passive configurations acceptable depending on failover time requirements. Origin should survive single component failures without stream interruption. Geographic redundancy recommended for mission-critical applications.

Scaling Considerations

Origin architecture should separate ingestion, transcoding, and packaging functions for independent scaling. Cloud-based origins provide flexibility for variable event schedules. Origin capacity should not be the limiting factor for audience scale—CDN edge should handle viewer connections.

Monitoring and Analytics

Delivery infrastructure must include comprehensive monitoring of origin health, CDN performance, and viewer experience metrics. Real-time alerting should enable rapid response to delivery issues. Analytics should track quality of experience metrics including startup time, rebuffering, and playback errors.

Security Considerations

Content protection requirements including token authentication, geographic restrictions, and DRM integration should be addressed in delivery architecture. CDN should support required security features without compromising delivery performance. HTTPS delivery is required for all professional webcasting.