Wowza Community

Push or Pull - please advise

Hello,

Our project includes around 200 IP cameras, currently connected in Origin/Edge configuration for security reasons, no load is expected.

As this involves a life saving application, apart from stream security we must consider: low latency and fast connect to the stream. In the current configuration the player first connect to the stream is too slow. My questions:

Should we switch to stream target configuration? Is it feasible with this amount of cameras? Will we get better or worse at stream latency?

BR,

Yael

Hi,

Using a “Persistent Mode” setup with 200 this would require a very large amount of bandwidth between Origin/Edge servers. You may be able to achieve quicker connections by using RTMP streams and the low-latency configuration described in this article:

Guide to Low Latency Streaming

Best regards,

Andrew

Thank you Andrew,

The IP cameras will stream periodically, only when requested (no load is expected). It looks like the ‘Persistent mode’ will only works for consistent streaming.

  • Should we consider using stream targets instead? (We can connect the stream in the Origin server using an API call). Again, Our main concern is fast-connect and low-latency.

  • RTMP is not option as we support mobile applications.

Thank you

Yael.

Hi,

A stream target would result in all streams mapped being pushed to the destination(s) - which can be another Wowza host - for as long as the streams are being published on the first Wowza server. It’s not really the same as having an origin/edge workflow and will transmit quite a bit of traffic if all 200 of your streams are pushed in this way. It will make them immediately available on an edge though and you can treat the edge streams just like you would any other live published stream. If you have the network and server capacity then it’s certainly one option you can try but I’d also look at a more classical origin/edge setup as described in the article Andrew provided and compare the two.

Paul