Octoshape and Juniper Networks are partnering to provide a foundation for broadband television delivery with the scalability, quality and cost-efficiency of broadcast television. The companies say the collaboration is a significant step forward in making the internet a reliable medium for high-quality video distribution.
The solution is being showcased at the New Jersey labs of Juniper networks. It integrates the federated multicast platform with edge routers from Juniper Networks to enable both native multicast and automatic multicast tunnelling.
While multicast has long been seen as the answer for delivering simultaneous media streams to large numbers of users over a managed network, being the basis on which operator IPTV services are delivered, the internet in general does not support multicast delivery, even if it is enabled across backbone networks.
Automatic Multicast Tunnelling or AMT provides a way of dynamically relaying multicast traffic across networks that do not support native multicast.
Using this approach, Octoshape Infinite HD-M enables large volumes of broadband TV to be delivered efficiently over last mile networks without requiring the vast infrastructure upgrades necessary with traditional video delivery platforms.
The HD-M solution for high-definition multicast internet video has been in production since April 2012 and now employs the first commercially available AMT relay from Juniper.
Telco and cable operators that are part of the Infinite HD-M federated network receive the signals via native IP Multicast in a way that allows them to easily manage large volumes of traffic without upgrading their internet capacity
The integration of Octoshape technology differentiates Juniper Networks by enabling telco, operator and campus networks to facilitate multicast over an unmanaged broadband network.
“Octoshape’s advanced video distribution technology provides high definition Internet video regardless of the geographic location, connectivity or network conditions of the viewer,” according to Mike Bushong of Juniper Networks. “Combined with Juniper’s AMT technology on its MX Series routers, it enables us to transform the quality and economics of internet-based video.”
“When combined with Octoshape’s Infinite HD-M technology it enables us to jointly bring together the entire video distribution solution for a unique and industry-changing offering in the internet video distribution segment,” added Michael Koehn Milland, the chief executive Octoshape.
From a background in peer-to-peer network distribution, Octoshape has evolved to develop a global live video distribution service that aims to bring fixed-price economics to online video by offering flat rate per channel pricing.
Doubts are often expressed whether the internet will ever be able to deliver television services to large audiences as cost-effectively as traditional broadcast methods. This is often based on the misapprehension that such services require unicast delivery that scales linearly with the number of recipients.
For decades, multicast distribution has been envisaged as the solution for delivering one-to-many media services over internet protocols, but for various technical and commercial reasons it has only generally been deployed across private managed networks.
While the long-term goal may be for network providers to enable native multicast directly to the end user, solutions such as the Octoshape approach aim to overlay multicast delivery over existing legacy networks, potentially enabling economic distribution of live television services across the internet to very large audiences.