flowplayer problem with origin/edge & redirect settings

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Dear All,

Any support will be very appreciate on this issue we encounter during our wowza architecture deployment.

We have deployed 4 servers on independent hardware for this configuration.

  • 2 are set-up as origin

  • 2 are set-up as edge

    Our encoders push the live mp4/h264 streaming on the origin who make it available to the client by requesting a second application also hosted on the origin to return the netconnection address of the best edge available.

    To be fully redundant, we need to be able to configure the player to use a load-balancing feature to try to connect to the second origin server in car the first is no more available. Randomly or in sequence - it’s same at this point.

    We decide to work with flowplayer, the latest release available at this date on the flowplayer website.

    We tested different configuration to be sure the system is working nice and the configuration is correct.

  • encoder (live) -> origin <- player : OK

  • encoder (live) -> origin -> edge <- player : OK

  • encoder (live) -> origin -> edge | origin:redirect <- player : OK

    The problem occur when we tried to add load balancing and/or cluster functions in flowplayer.

    This is our integration code :

    <a href="#" style="display:block;width:480px;height:360px" id="player"> </a> 
<script type="text/javascript">
	flowplayer("player", "../flowplayer-3.2.7.swf",{
		clip: {
			url: 'mp4:RoomA_Floor',
			provider: 'rtmp',
			connectionProvider: 'clustering',
			live: true
		},
		plugins: {
			rtmp: {
				url: '../flowplayer.rtmp-3.2.3.swf'
			},
			clustering: {
				url: '../flowplayer.cluster-3.2.3.swf',
				netConnectionUrl: '',
				hosts: [
					{host:'rtmp://<origin_1>:1935/redirect'},
					{host:'rtmp://<origin_2>:1935/redirect'}]
				}
			}
		}
	);
</script>

    The player look to be not able with this configuration to correctly handle the redirect on the netconection. He try to connect the first origin, and few seconds after, the second and nothing append.

    If someone could provide us some assistance, at this point we are not able to find a workaround on the wowza forum & flowplayer documentation/forum.

    If you need any further informations, feel free to post.

    Thank you in advance,

    Yan

2

Yan,

If you are using Wowza Load Balancer, it doesn’t work that way. The redirect app redirects to an edge servers that are configured as Load Balancer Senders. An edge server is what a client connects to and streams from. The edge re-streams from an origin. The load balancer is an overlay that is not directly involved in streaming.

In Flowplayer, connect to the redirect app that is configured as shown in the package readme.html. Flowplayer will handle the redirect without any configuration changes on the player side, it is built-in.

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-get-dynamic-load-balancing-addon

Richard

3

Yan,

JW Player has a nice live streaming re-connector plugin that will work for you. If the primary origin fails, clients that stop streaming will re-connect. When they connect to an edge, they should fail-over to your secondary, unless you have made it primary arleady, which is what you should aim to do in that circumstance

Richard

4

Dear Richard,

Thank you for responding to my post, I really appreciate. Unfortunately this dosnt really address the case we have.

We need to be able to send the client request on a second loadbalancer if the primary loadbalancer fail. The mechanics involved in this make impossible to configure correctly FlowPlayer for doing this.

We are going to try with JW Player and an external JSP to generate a XML source file with the running balancer. But it’s a little beat complicated for doing, what by default balancing & clustering should do.

Best,

Yan