CenturyLink, which is anticipating OTT video traffic growth to keep rising, is positioning itself with a new content delivery network to handle the global influx.
The company this week announced a partnership with Steamroot, a peer-to-peer networking company, to offer a software-based mesh network based off its own CDN. That means providers can rely on both CenturyLink’s CDN and a network of connected devices (including smartphones, laptops and smart TVs) watching the same livestream to scale up reliable video delivery.
"The popularity of live events and the propensity for popular content to attract massive internet audiences on day and date releases is necessitating the adoption of new technologies to address peak traffic demands for OTT platforms, broadcasters and gaming companies," said Bill Wohnoutka, vice president of global internet and content delivery services, in a statement. "By integrating Streamroot's peer-to-peer assisted CDN technology into our media delivery platform, CenturyLink can offer customers an advantage in their drive to deliver the highest quality user experiences globally."
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Other CDN providers like Peer5 and Edgemesh are also using peer-to-peer technology to not only achieve better QoS and handle traffic spikes but also to reach more remote areas.
CenturyLink also announced that its Vyvx suite of fiber-based broadcast services now securely links up with the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The companies said the integration allows full-time channels and live event content to be sent directly to GCP to route, protect and monitor broadcast streams.
"OTT platforms, broadcasters and gaming companies need a high-availability, low-latency network solution to deliver their live events and linear programming to cloud service providers for encoding, packaging and delivery to their CDNs," said Bill Wohnoutka, vice president of global internet and content delivery services for CenturyLink, in a statement.
CenturyLink’s partnership with GCP comes a few months after the company announced a similar integration with Amazon Web Services.