Pull RTMP stream via HTTP?

[Geoff_Tognetti]

I have successfully set up my CDN (Edgecast) to pull smooth and cupertino streams using Wowza as a customer origin server. However I can’t seem to do what seems to be the simpliest of all - pull an RTMP stream.

Edgecast tells me that in order for customer origin to work for RTMP the FMS or Wowza server/stream needs to be accessable via http. They say that FMS allows this - i.e. the streamer source is set to http://mywowzaserver.com/live/myStream instead of rtmp://mywowzaserver.com/live/myStream.

For reference what I am doing is:

Sending a h.264/AAC RTMP stream from Wirecast to my Wowza 2 server

Using the correct packetizers to encapsulate said stream for RTMP, Smoothstreaming/Silverlight and Apple iOS

I can connect to all 3 just fine when I point my clients (Flash, Silverlight, and iOS) directly to the Wowza server. Using customer origin (pull) on Edgecast I can also connect via my Silverlight and iOS clients just fine through Edgecast. I can’t connect my Flash client through Edgecast because of the issue mentioned above.

Does this make any sense? Is this something I can configure Wowza to do? Or am I going about this wrong?

[Geoff_Tognetti]

Finally got a hold of the “right” person at Edgecast who explained their mistake; what they said above is wrong.

For reference, Edgecast doesn’t allow customer origin (pull) for RTMP, for that you need to use the Wowza Push package and send it to them. HTTP streams however can be pulled, easily, from a Wowza server.

[Geoff_Tognetti]

First you have to set up your Wowza server as a customer origin server for http large traffic, done in their (Edgecast) control panel.

Then you have to open a ticket with them and see if they will add a custom rule for you. This is because Wowza doesn’t yet officially support using their server as a origin for http streams, meaning the packet data they send have unique url id’s for each segment, meaning a CDN like Edgecast can’t/won’t cache the data (because to them, it all looks different) meaning the whole point of using a CDN is rendered invalid because they will simply forward every single request back to your server.

Edgecast, and I imagine some other CDN’s, can filter out the unique id’s of the url (ignore them after a certain character) but they don’t like to do this, it adds strain to their systems. The correct way would be for Wowza to send packetized data in a manner that can be easily cached, which I hear rumors from time to time they are thinking of doing, but haven’t yet.

The official line from Wowza remains that they don’t officially support using the server as a live origin point for CDN’s. Had I fully grasped this going in I probably wouldn’t have chosen it, as it is I found a work around with my provider and am hoping this gets added to Wowza 3.

[Chad_Shryock]

Hi PlanetIx,

Can you post your solution?

Thanks,

Chad.