How can I use many servers for a live video streaming site?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hello everyone I am new on the forums here but I have been using a licensed wowza media server for a number of months already.

I have set up a live streaming website similar to justin.tv and ustream.tv using wowza on a dedicated server. I get my members to stream directly to the rtmp address of my server IP, (eg rtmp://191.131.444.555/live)

But the more streams that are created, the more the server resources are used up, and the more I need to create another server.

My question is how can I create more servers without creating a big list of ips which would be confusing to my members. I see justin.tv and ustream.tv get you to broadcast to their domain name., (eg rtmp://live.justin.tv/app) I can do this as well, but then the streams would take up the resources for webpage loading…

Is there some kind of wowza plugin which will detect the broadcast and distribute it to a random server ip?

Also I am using JWPlayer. If I was to use many servers hidden under one domain name, when playing the live stream, what would I enter for the rtmp address? I see some most live streamin websites just have their domain name , or some subdomain for the rtmp address. What is the best way?

Sometimes it is hard to tell what they use as when I check the source code it doesn’t show the rtmp address or stream ID. Anyone know how they hide this information? As it is ideal for me as it would prevent random people broadcasting to these streamIDs when they are offline.

I appreciate any help anyone can offer.

2

Hello hotviper,

To setup multiple servers with loadbalancing use the LoadBalancer Module.

User’s will then connect to your domain name, and be redirected to the IPs of your other servers. If you’re doing chat or letting your user’s publish, you will need to keep track of which server the client that initiates the stream connects to in your database/web application. Then when subsequent users wish to join that chat/stream, direct them to the correct server.

For securing publishing and stream names take a look at the various options in the MediaSecurity Addon.

You’ll need to familiarize yourself with creating Wowza modules using the Wowza IDE. This way you can adapt the various modules mentioned here to your needs.

3

Hey Randall,

Thank you so much for the info. It is very helpful.

I will research the IDE and see how to modify these modules to suit my needs.

Thanks again!

hv