Wowza Community

How to handle large number of streams

Hi,

We have a requirement where client wants to push a few 1000 streams to a server about 100kbps each.

We are planning to deploy same using Wowza and an EC2 instance.

I want to know how many streams can the Wowza server handle on a single instance?

How do I make sure the server is capable of handling large number of streams being pushed to it?

Please suggest.

I use c3.2xlarge and can serve up to 2000++ connections at 1 time…just to be safe, I use cloudfront

Hi,

1000 input/source streams on a single server instance is considered extremely high.

Normally we do not recommend more than 200. If they are audio only perhaps

that number could be a little higher. You would need consider several Origin servers

to handle such a load.

You would need to test starting with a low number of input streams and then slowly

scale up and monitor the resource usage as you go.

Daren

Hi,

Incoming live streams use up several different resources on a system, some memory, some CPU and of course network.

It’s probably only a small percent of each of those resources per stream, but have 200 streams and that adds up quickly.

As I said though, audio only will probably allow you more than this number.

Load testing is the best way to know.

Daren

Hi,

You would probably still be facing several servers.

The Wowza specifications/System requirements here

shows typical High-load recommended production hardware. You would need to improve upon that and test and scale where needed.

Daren

I am sure it can. But that would be 2000++ clients watching a stream.

I want to know if Wowza can intake those many streams being pushed to it, not delivered from it.

Hi Daren,

Is the limitation of 200 because of no. of streams or is it because of the input network speed?

We would end up using several 100 servers if were to limit to 200 streams per server. And that would be too costly for us.

If I can arrange a server which has resources to handle, will i still face issues?

I would like to stream atleast about 3000-4000 streams per server. What configuration would you suggest in that case?

Yes. We did it.

How many streams are you looking to handle? At what bitrate?

u can handle about 1500 streams on a c3.8xlarge instance if you are only delivering RTMP.

If you are planning for transcoding then don’t go for more then 1000 per server.

Use multiple instances.

c3.8xlarge has a 10GB NIC, so if people are also going to watch those streams, you should take the same into consideration.

Yes it can support 1000 input streams.

But if you are going to watch those 1000 streams as well, then you will have to consider the bandwidth limitations.

Hi, were you able to stream 1000+ streams to a single server. We are struggling with similar issue.

Thank You!

Thank you very much for your immediate reply.

Which instance did you use. Is it possible to share the server specifications and the maximum number of input streams this server can support.

Thank you!

How many streams are you looking to handle? At what bitrate?

500kbps , very large customer base.

Thanks for your response.

We are going to use RTSP. I see that you are talking about output streams

Can the instance support 1000 INPUT streams?

how can I que streamers so that only 1 steamer is allowed to connect to the server at a time but all other connection requests are qued on a first come, first serve basis? I only need to allow 1 streamer to connect at any given time but want all streamers to be qued. Thanks