[462] in resnet
Re: video streaming
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Kristoff)
Thu Nov 29 19:59:02 2001
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Message-ID: <20011129183814.A16721@aharp.is-net.depaul.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 18:38:14 -0600
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: John Kristoff <jtk@AHARP.IS-NET.DEPAUL.EDU>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <EF6375215231544B87FD58A965410B8A9654EB@exchange.housing.ucsb.edu>; from ckline@HOUSING.UCSB.EDU on Thu,
Nov 29, 2001 at 10:27:47AM -0800
On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 10:27:47AM -0800, Curtis Kline wrote:
> Does anyone out there have experience with video streaming on your
> ResNet network? One of our departments that provides cable TV content
> to students would like to simulcast that channel on our ResNet network.
I can't talk much about taking your cable and plopping it onto your IP
net, but it can certainly be done. At the last N+I, the University of
Michigan guys were showing CNN over the net and they took that from
their cable TV system through I2 to the show. I don't know if they
are doing this on campus as standard practice, but that may be one
place to look.
> I've looked over Cisco's IP/TV product family, and it looks applicable.
> I'm wondering if anyone here has done this, what products were used,
> what kind of network configuration was necessary, and what kind of
> bandwidth impact was made.
We're using IP/TV for various projects and it can probably do what you
want as well. I assume you're interested in IP multicast, which it is
pretty good at and based on what you've said so far, you'll probably
want tto set it up that way.
You'll need at least two Windows boxes. One to run the IP/TV server,
which you would probably have near your cable feed. The server would
have a video encoding board that would take the feed from a camera or
some other mixing board I imagine. You can encode and send it out
using MPEG 1 or 2 depending on the type of video card you get and what
you want.
You'll also need a box for the IP/TV Content Manager, which is really
just a web based application server to setup and management the server.
You have all sorts of controls for the sessions with IP/TV, it should
meet most of your IP distribution needs. You can specify all sorts of
things such as addressing, scope, transmission type (unicast, multicast,
etc.), bps rates, concurrent clients and so on. Cisco installs a
version of Apache. Currently configuration isn't all that great. Your
primary option is based on IP address, although you could also probably
use Apache's ability to configure more security than the CM gives you.
The server can also store live transmissions to disk or serve archived
program. Of course you'll need plenty of disk space if you plan on
storing much at any decent bit rate. :-)
The students will then use the IP/TV client viewer which you'll be able
to distribute to them freely. There is a browser plug-in or stand-alone
Windows app for Windows. I have gotten some of the 3rd party Linux based
tools to work as well, but its certainly not as straightforward for most
users.
You'll want to make sure you coordinate with your network folks if you're
not them. I'd recommend studying in detail how to setup IP multicast
for your environment, particularly in the areas of IP multicast routing
and IP multicast support on your switches (which you hopefully have in
the closets).
We've run live MPEG1 sessions without any problems. We're also using it
to encode/broadcast live transmissions. We hope to have a library of
programs built up for various University folks to watch. We also will
be encoding some VHS training tapes we have from Rich Seifert. With his
permission, we'll be able to make one of those available to the whole
Internet. If you do IP multicast to the public Internet, you'll hopefully
see this from us sometime early next year. All this has been mostly
for R&D/testing purposes. If it takes off like it think it might, we
might expand the use of IP/TV or something like it to support some
distance learning programs.
Other products I've seen or heard of that you may want to investigate:
VBrick
NCast
Innovacom
John
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