The content consumption revolution – 4 reasons to use content delivery networks

From sporting events, concerts, gala parties, award presentations, and premieres of seasons to online gaming, video is everywhere.

Mexico, February 2023. During the COVID-1 pandemic, video streaming received a major boost, largely because people adopted a work-at-home strategy. As a result, video streaming has become the primary source of entertainment, and even though the vast majority have returned to their offices, the streaming industry continues to thrive and expand.

According to Digital TV Research, the streaming industry’s revenue in Latin America will reach $8.54 billion by 2027.

As a result, the live streaming of events has revolutionized the way content is consumed, as stated by Jaime Durán, product director of Connectivity & Content at Cirion Technologies.  With the large number of users accessing, uploading, and exploring unlimited amounts of content, streaming servers can become overloaded; hence the enormous importance of Content Delivery Network (CDN).

What is CDN, or Content Delivery Network, after all?

Durán assures that “in layman’s terms, CDN is a network of perimeter servers optimally located around the world to respond to any server request and deliver the desired content.”

This network allows a more agile transfer of the assets needed to load online content, which includes videos, images, HTML pages or JavaScript files.

When speed and low latency are the name of the game

Thanks to new technological advances like CDN, the avenues for delivering high-quality content to users has been simplified to ensure a fast and stable connection for on-demand streaming.

A CDN has servers at strategic points for the exchange of Internet traffic (IXP) between networks – key locations where different providers connect to provide mutual access to the stream originating on their networks.

CDNs are located in strategic data centers around the world, improve security, and are designed to survive various types of Internet outages and congestion, reducing costs and data delivery transit time.

Cirion Technologies has a complete portfolio of CDN solutions that, through software-defined networks and optimized network routing, help reduce the reliance on third-party infrastructure to obtain high performance and low latency.

Why is CDN technology used in live event broadcasting?

Content Distribution Networks help improve the quality of live streaming by distributing content to the streaming servers closest to the end user, which makes it possible to:

1. Ensure sufficient bandwidth for periods of high traffic,

   preventing origin servers from becoming overloaded if requests exceed their bandwidth limit. If a live streaming suddenly experiences a rapid increase in viewers and all content requests are made to a single origin server, a bottleneck could occur, causing server downtime.  With CDN technology, the server can be protected from these scenarios and the responsibility of delivering content can be dispersed across the network of streaming servers.

2. Reduce latency and turnaround time

   by caching content from CDN servers closer to end users, reducing the need to send live streaming requests to the origin server and then returning content. This reduces round-trip time and, more importantly, minimizes latency and buffering to ensure real-time streaming.

3. Support live streaming to a global audience.
   Given that distribution occurs through perimeter servers located around the world in a content distribution network, CDNs offer global live streaming scalability. Furthermore, regardless of location, the viewing experience is the same and latency and buffering are minimized through the CDN servers closest to the end user.

4. Reduce workload on origin servers.

   CDNs help lower much of the workload on the network’s origin servers.  Because it takes a lot of computing power for a single server to respond to requests – even more so in live video streaming – CDNs essentially protect the origin servers from overload and keep them running.

Live streaming events offer a unique opportunity for broadcasters to differentiate themselves from the competition and offer viewers a lasting and memorable experience. Scaling delivery to increasingly larger live audiences is one of the key challenges facing online content companies today, but it shouldn’t be an obstacle to making the most of the revenue, engagement and branding possibilities that live events offer.

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Contato para a Imprensa:

Henyi Gutiérrez
Sr. Communications & Marketing
Andean & Northern Cluster
henyi.gutierrez@ciriontechnologies.com
+57 601 619000