Stream servers using multicast

This is not about the API but there didn’t seem to be a better forum topic.

Is there specific reason why users have to specify which (location-based) server they’re streaming to?
Is there a reason the ingest servers don’t use multicast/geocast?

I’m seeing a situation where they’d be allowing a US east client stream to a US west server or vise versa. This thought leads me to: why would the client want to do this?

There used to be one but I don’t think many users actually used it. Most seem to prefer changing the locations manually to find the option that works the best for their location and ISP.

There is a round robin - “live.twitch.tv” but I never saw anycast/multicast/geocast. As george stated, there might be issues the user is having with the route and prefer to set another nearby manually. Although something like anycast should technically prevent this as choose the best/healthiest/shortest route. But that won’t help if the actual ingest is having issues.

live.twitch.tv is US West: San Francisio.

The old “global load balancing service” was live-3c.justin.tv. I’m not sure how it was implemented but it never worked very well so eventually it was quietly removed. This was from back in the day when FMLE was still the streaming application of choice (and you had to manually enter the RTMP server in the application), XSplit was still getting started and no one know what an OBS was.

It’s not US West: San Francisco according to it’s DNS entry:

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-25.P1.el5_11.12 <<>> live.twitch.tv
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15514
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 16, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;live.twitch.tv. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.82
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.83
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.86
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.84
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.81
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.84
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.80
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.83
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.81
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.85
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.85
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.90
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.80
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.86
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 192.108.239.82
live.twitch.tv. 59 IN A 23.160.0.89

;; Query time: 46 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Mon Jun 12 19:30:47 2017
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 288

EDIT: Foot in mouth, made some incorrect assumptions. This is US West, San Francisco

Seems like SFO to me:

I suppose I should have looked at all the rdns entires first. :slight_smile:

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.