By Julie Basa
Many IT pros we talk to are testing live events for Microsoft Stream. They know it’s a great option for streaming (and it’s free with Microsoft 365), but they’re concerned about viewer experience.
They’ve told us that during some of their tests, viewer experience buffering, glitches and jitter. The problem isn’t the video platform, usability or accessibility. It’s the impact enterprise video has on their network. High-quality video eats up a lot of bandwidth. The more you scale, the more your network becomes stressed, leading to complaints from viewers (and maybe even your CEO!).
If you can relate, it might be time to explore an enterprise content delivery network (eCDN). By intelligently routing the flow of video traffic around your network, an eCDN improves network performance and ultimately viewer experience.
Meet Multicast
Multicast is the most efficient eCDN for Microsoft Stream. It sends a single video stream simultaneously to every person in your enterprise without using any more bandwidth than needed for one viewer. For instance, it takes approximately 20,000 mbps of bandwidth to webcast to 10,000 people, but only 2 mpbs if you’re using multicast.*
As the only multicast option for Microsoft Stream, Ramp Multicast+ is easy to use and manage. You just install our software and select Ramp when you configure your Stream environment. A Great View Experience – Easy Peasy!
Mutlicast+ is a network overlay that uses your existing network infrastructure to deliver high-quality, stable video to all of your viewers. Packed with robust event analytics and bandwidth-smoothing technologies, it’s a great option for enterprises with multicast-enabled networks. Once deployed, Multicast+ also serves as a common distribution infrastructure for all of your enterprise steaming platforms.
Intelligent Video Caching
Even though it’s Multicast Monday, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Ramp OmniCache, the only intelligent video caching solution integrated with Microsoft Stream. OmniCache dynamically retrieves live and on-demand video from any video source and stores local copies at key locations inside your firewall to drastically reduce network congestion—by 90 percent or more. As a result, viewers get their video from the local cache instead of the cloud. This creates a great viewer experience by having the video only travel short distances versus h across your entire network.
Resources
Learn what makes Multicast+ and OmniCache the most efficient solutions for Microsoft 365 video:
Ramp/Microsoft 365 video Solution Brief >>
Multicast+: Next-Generation Multicast in the Age of HTML5 >>
*For this calculation, we’re assuming one video stream is equal to 2mbps.
