I’m exploring ways to improve viewer experience during live events. While platforms like Wowza, Dacast, and AWS MediaLive offer decent latency control, I’m curious about practical methods others use. especially when scaling during spikes in viewership.
Managing latency during live streaming, especially at scale, is always challenging. We’ve tried different approaches over time, Let me shar what worked for us
Low latency Protocols: We’ve used LL-HLS for most public-facing streams, WebRTC when sub-second latency was necessary, like during interactive sessions. Dacast has a decent low-latency mode that we’ve used effectively for live training events.
Multi-CDN Distribution: For high traffic events, distributing load across multiple CDNs helps reduce buffering, improve playback consistency globally.
Cloud Auto-Scaling: We rely on cloud native auto scaling (AWS/GCP) to manage backend performance. During a recent event, we used a platform that supports cloud native scale VPlayed which made it easier to adjust infrastructure on the fly.
Interactive Features via Separate Channels: For things like chat, polls, reactions, we use WebSocket-based services or third party APIs. Keeping interactivity separate from the video stream has reduced pressure on the core delivery.
Smart Buffering : We tune buffer sizes and use adaptive bitrate streaming to match network conditions, which helps reduce latency spikes for users on slower connections.
Overall, Each platform has its trade offs. VPlayed, Dacast, AWS MediaLive have their strengths; it really depends on how much control and scalability you need.