Better option for live streaming: multiple Wowza servers/instances with dynamic load balancing or one Wowza instance with Cloudfront (assuming HTTP delivery of course)?
I have tested Cloudfront a few times now and find the performance of the live stream to be terrible. I may be doing something wrong but it’s pretty easy to set up, so I’m not sure. I have tried setting up and EC2 Wowza 4 and Cloudfront separate as well as using AWS Cloudformation for Wowza 4, both result in the same performance.
Going direct through the Wowza server with a .SMIL adaptive file (from Transcoder Add-On) works flawlessly, going from 160p at 300kbps to 360p at 1.5Mbps very easily (I have plenty of bandwidth to view). This is using the Live application on Wowza 4.
However, once I try to connect through Cloudfront to view using the HTTP Live Origin application, I have to use the Transcoder Add-On’s NGRP streams (ngrp:myStream_all), the stream has no bandwidth, buffers constantly, and is pretty much unwatchable. There is no .SMIL file option on the HTTP Live Origin application.
Has anyone else had this experience? Either the NGRP file is not behaving properly or Cloudfront is not working as it should. Cloudfront in theory is supposed to be the same, but clearly is not in my tests.