Show HN: BemTV – Hybrid CDN/P2P Architecture for HLS Broadcasts | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BemTV – Hybrid CDN/P2P Architecture for HLS Broadcasts

blog.flavioribeiro.com

71 pointsflavioribeiro22 comments

Great work. I'm always excited by attempts to marry the centralized nature of the web with all we've learnt about P2P. Best of both worlds. Just gave it a try. The video was a bit choppy for me, on a ~3Mbps connection, but I'd like to see how it works with a larger swarm (it's remained fairly stable at 8). I'll take some time to look at the code, too, though it's likely beyond my immediate grasp :)

thank you! I still need to calibrate when a peer gives up to receive by p2p and goes to CDN, but it seems it's working for some swarms with low RTT. Regarding the code, I bet you'll not have problems to understand but feel free to ask me anything you want.

I hate the fact that as a Canadian, I can't really support any video streaming services relying on P2P simply due to our archaic bandwidth restrictions.

Most Canadian ISPs have combined Up/Down Bandwidth Caps, which are already insanely easy to hit with any sort of media streaming (they usually range from 40-80 GB/mo). Peering any of these services is only going to make matters worse.

As a Swede who's been living in Toronto (and been on Teksavvy), I really have to agree.

The caps are really limiting, and worse than that they're something you have to be aware of to not get stuck with overage charges.

The lack of symmetric options is really a problem too. What good is an 'unlimited' upload cap if the bandwidth is 10% of what your download speed is?

It's awful. The Canadian broadband market lacks competition and fiber availability.

They offer unlimited data plans for internet. And it isn't archaic (unless you live outside a city).

Not on any major providers, at least in Ontario. Bell, Rogers, Cogeco are all definitely metered and limited (for all reasonable price ranges at least, $90+ for unlimited bandwidth is not reasonable compared to prices in other countries).

But in most of the services areas where you can get Bell or Rogers, you can get one of the 3rd party providers like Start or Teksavvy. These providers have an unmetered upstream cap and very generous downstream caps.

A download cap of 300Gb on a 150Mpbs link is hardly generous, which is what Teksavvy offers in Ontario.

It's a joke. And the only reason is to make you pay for the more expensive connection. Maybe also to hand you additional charges.

+1 Bandwidth for video is not a problem in the city.

Plus this seems like the sort of technology that may even make less bandwidth congestion. It might even speed up your archaic internet connection.

Since some people asked for, I just released a small step-by-step guide on how to deploy BemTV on your transmissions: https://github.com/bemtv/bemtv#how-to-use-it-on-my-own-hls-t...

Project's page with a live demo: http://bem.tv/

This doesn't seem to work without Flash. I'm a little disappointed.

hey dublinben, thank you for your comment. Since the browsers do not support HLS by default, it is needed to use Flash for it. I'm planning to bootstrap a version with DASH support (probably using dash.js) dropping the need of Flash.

Awesome work Flavio! Hope to integrate with Peer5 soon. https://github.com/Peer5/bemtv https://github.com/Peer5/P2PXHR

A service that I pay for or that shows me ads does not get to also steal my upload for P2P.

Especially if they do it without even telling me.

Right, because the only costs associated with any content service are due to distribution. Producing said content is free, right?

What if they tell you before you sign up?

Hum very interesting.

The adult video sector will be very interested ... The bandwith is a mjaor problem there.

And professionnal streamer too.

Regards

Maybe Google Hangouts should be interested in this.

hey fiatjaf. Actually, Google is already using WebRTC on Hangouts: http://www.webrtcworld.com/topics/webrtc-world/articles/3584...

This is what Netflix and the like need to use, too.

Twitch.tv should use it too!

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