Akamai have their own Wowza servers but why use them over your own Wowza servers?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Is it correct that Akamai and other CDN’s have their own Wowza servers? I’m trying to understand the differences between two ways of reaching the Akamai CDN.

Wirecast streaming to my own EC2 Wowza server Push Publishing to Akamai CDN.

Wirecast streaming to Akamai’s Wowza servers that then feeds the Akamai CDN.

Could you please elaborate on these two approaches?

2

Anyone?

3

Hi,

If you’re controlling the server which is ingesting the stream before pushing to Akamai then you can also push to other CDNs or have customers connect to that server directly if required.

You will also be able to see the logs created on the server should something happen which is unexpected giving you some control over resetting the stream if needed.

Regards,

Jason

4

If you’re controlling the server which is ingesting the stream before pushing to Akamai then you can also push to other CDNs or have customers connect to that server directly if required. You will also be able to see the logs created on the server should something happen which is unexpected giving you some control over resetting the stream if needed.

Thank you Jason. So is this accurate? And are there more pros and cons to add to the lists?

Running and maintaining your own Wowza server set up to Push Publish to Akamai CDN

Advantages

Ability to push to other CDNs

Ability to consume stream directly from Wowza server (maybe in case of rare CDN downtime)

Ability to view access and error log

Ability to restart the server, service or the stream itself

Disadvantages

You are using the public internet twice:

  1. From on premise encoder to your Wowza server

  2. From your Wowza server to Akamai’s CDN.

Using Akamai’s Wowza server that feeds the Akamai CDN

Advantages

There’s only one potentially risky internet route from on premise encoder to Akamai’s Wowza server. The Wowza server will feed the Akamai CDN over LAN, so this is one public internet route less.

Disadvantages

You can’t push to other CDNs

You can’t consume stream directly from the Wowza server

You can’t view access and error log

You can’t restart the Akamai-managed Wowza server, service or the stream itself