Over the past year or so, we’ve seen legacy broadcasters and video-on-demand streamers embrace live sports streaming. As Netflix and other giants eye sports events that draw massive crowds, entertainment as a whole is moving toward instant, streamed content over the internet. In preparation, British services are devising new, more efficient ways to deliver streamed events in the best possible quality.
Latency and Live Streaming
On November 15th, 2024, Netflix ambitiously streamed the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight to over 60 million viewers worldwide. What followed was public outcry, after the record-breaking event suffered from buffering, low-resolution periods, and even complete screen freezing. It showed that even one of the biggest names in the business could suffer from backend distribution issues.
The problem? To put it simply, there was too much demand, which meant their networks were overloaded. This slowed (or outright stopped) data from the feed from getting to where it needed to be, causing high latency. Latency issues tend to cause a small delay for most streams but if it’s a large event with a massive audience, then they can break the whole broadcast. Typically, online services use CDNs to break up traffic into manageable portions, but this still isn’t enough if the demand is still very high. By the following December, Netflix had no reported issues for their NFL streams, either due to using familiar equipment or upgrading their hardware behind the scenes.
Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery
While Netflix’s example may have been one of the biggest exhibitions in modern boxing, it still showed that nobody is infallible if their networks aren’t built to handle massive, persistent spikes in viewership. With entertainment as a whole moving toward internet streaming, that viewership is only going to get bigger in the future.
As it happens, the BT Group in Britain has been devising a way to make CDNs more efficient since 2023. Being a densely packed island that loves its sports, they’re no stranger to sports streaming. It’s also the home of many large iGaming providers who, along with typical games like slots, also offer rooms where people can play live games in real time. Live casinos that stream in the UK offer roulette, blackjack, and even game shows that are all hosted by a real person. Just like with sports, a delay in the stream could have a profound impact on the user’s experience, but fortunately, these services can handle the traffic being thrown at them. That can’t be said for every event, which is why groups like BT want to level up British streaming.
The solution is Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery (MAUD), which aims to improve video quality while also reducing traffic spikes. In multicast distribution, a transmission is sent simultaneously to multiple receivers, whereas unicast involves a one-to-one connection. Although streamed events use multicast, the HTTP-based internet is primarily designed for unicast data transmission.
Network operators frequently utilize multicast networks and groups like BT have figured out a way to send streaming data through them. They take users’ unicast transmissions and bunch them together, like a group of cables, then multicast them out to edge servers. It’s there that the data gets untangled and unicast to the intended recipient from a much closer and reliable server in the CDN. By doing this, you get the benefits of both unicast and multicast distribution. Having already trialed successfully, we can be pretty hopefully of this new delivery method.