Delivering media content over the internet at scale poses a unique set of challenges for architects and operators. Viewers expect the highest quality of experience with wide selection of content at high resolution, fast start-up time, and reliable delivery throughout the playback session. Live streaming can amplify the challenges of maintaining consistent low latency and reliable delivery, with peaks in demand for popular content and live events. Media operators also need to ensure that content is secure in order to protect rights holders as well as their own revenue and reputation.
Amazon CloudFront is a CDN that securely delivers video, data, applications, and API operations to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, and with a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront works with other AWS services and it uses a global network of Points of Presence that are all connected to AWS Regions through the AWS network backbone.
Media workloads in this context include live streaming (live events, 24/7 linear and assembled channels) and video on demand (VOD) content delivered over the internet. In both scenarios, media platforms use streaming techniques to allow end customers to view the media without having to download the content in its entirety. Delivery for closed networks has slightly different considerations. To discuss how AWS enables these types of solutions, contact an Amazon Web Services sales representative.
Media delivery requires an end-to-end systems approach. In this whitepaper, we start by explaining the architecture of media workloads. Then, we explain the streaming technologies. Finally, we describe a CDN configuration in detail.
