Introducing Cloudflare Stream: Fixing the Streaming Video Market
Cloudflare turns seven years old today. We launched on September 27, 2010.
It was only a few days after our launch that we got our first request to support video streaming. Yet, until today, we'd avoided it.
Why? Simply put: the video streaming market is screwed up. While there's a lot of money spent on video, there are only really about 1,000 customers that do any meaningful level of streaming.
This is in large part because it's technically far too complicated. If you want to move beyond just uploading your videos to a consumer service like YouTube, then you have to use at least three different services. You need someone to encode your video into a streamable format, you need someone else to act as the content delivery network delivering the bytes, and you need someone else still to provide the player code that runs on the client device. Further, since video encoding standards keep evolving and vary across generations of devices, it becomes challenging to ensure a consistently high quality experience for all visitors.
And if that sounds like a technical mess, the business side is even worse. Encoding companies charge based on CPU usage, which is driven by Continue reading
How Cloudflare Streams
Every day, close to 1 billion people watch video through Cloudflare. That’s 100 petabytes of video every month. Last year, video made up 73% of all internet traffic, which is why earlier today we announced Cloudflare Stream, an end to end video solution designed to bring instant video to any device and network connection. Here’s how Stream works to optimize video upload, encoding and delivery.
Uploads
Using Cloudflare Stream starts with a call to the Stream API to /upload a video.
HTTP does not by default provide a reliable upload mechanism for large files, which can make it tricky to upload large media content like high quality video. If there’s any latency in the network connection, a timeout can cancel the entire upload and require the client to start over.
We use an open source upload protocol called Tus which allows for resumable uploads where the upload previously failed. Tus does this by splitting the download into manageable chunks and tracking completed chunks on the server.
Encodes
Video files are containers that hold the video file, the audio track, and some metadata. The video file is compressed by a codec. The codec is a compression algorithm for encoding video Continue reading
SDN Startups: Where Are They Now?
An update on some players in the once-hot software-defined networking space.
CCIE Recertification Continuing Education Program
The Cisco Continuing Education Program is a brilliant initiative from Cisco. It is not widely known about but Cisco recently announced a new program to help you re-certify your CCIE without taking the written exam. Continuing Education Program – How does it work? The concept is very simple, you have to obtain 100 credits […]
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2G is still the most common Mobile network technology
2G is still the most common deployed mobile access technology. It is hard to believe but as per my discussions with probably more than twenty Mobile Operators, 2G , especially GSM is the most common mobile access technology. Almost all those twenty Mobile operators deployed 3G and LTE and some of them deployed LTE Advanced as well, […]
The post 2G is still the most common Mobile network technology appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.
Collect SSH Keys with Ansible
Here’s a common scenario I’m encountering on Ansible-related forums:
Q: I cannot connect to network devices with my Ansible network modules. I keep getting these weird error messages…
Me: Are you sure you have the device SSH keys in known_hosts file?
Q: How did you know?
Read more ...Will Cisco or Lenovo Scoop Up NetApp to Boost Their Storage Play?
NetApp and Pure Storage are reportedly shopping themselves.
Netcat Quick Reference
Netcat quick reference guide.Netcat Quick Reference
Netcat is a utility for checking open ports. It has more flexibility than using the telnet command and can be used with scripts more easily. This is not a comprehensive tutorial, only a quick reference source. Consult the man pages and/or documentation for indepth explanation of commands. I...Post Equifax, We Need to Reconsider How to Identify People
Victims of identity theft will tell you the experience is like having your personal life broken into, tossed around, and thrown out onto the street. It is a violation that is indescribable. Then, you could discover that strangers are impersonating you, carrying out crimes under your name, and destroying your reputation. Unraveling the mess that follows is a long, painful and never-ending process – all this because someone else was careless or willfully negligent with your data.
Even if your data was not exposed in the Equifax breach, you should be both concerned and angry. This is a potentially catastrophic breach: roughly 143 million individuals (approximately 45% of the US population) now face the prospect of identity theft.
As a society, we need to seriously rethink why and how we identify people. How did the social security number become the default identifier, especially for non-governmental functions such as credit reporting? When the Social Security Administration first issued SSNs in 1936, their “sole purpose” was to track the earning history of workers for benefits. In fact, Kaya Yurieff points out that until 1972, the bottom of the card read: “FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES — NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION.”
Social security numbers Continue reading
A networking expert on how to experiment with containers using Mesosphere and Cumulus Linux
With the rising popularity of containers, it seems that containers and networking interact more and more frequently. Amongst all the excitement, there is also terminology and technical complexity. And because of this, I’m super grateful for Cumulus in the Cloud. As a Sr. Consulting Engineer, part of my job is ensuring I am deeply familiar with the technologies and methodologies our customers are using. I’ve recently been playing with Cumulus in the Cloud to better learn how Mesos’s Marathon and Mesosphere interoperate with Cumulus Linux and NetQ.
Let me start off by saying that if you’re interested in container networking but want more information on how to do it right, we’re hosting a webinar with Mesosphere that you should most definitely check out. Our co-founder, JR Rivers, will also be hosting, and, I promise you, he’s always an engaging speaker. Of course if you’re already familiar with container networking, or you would like to learn about it in a more hands-on atmosphere, then please read on!
I’m a networking veteran, but working at Cumulus has pushed the boundaries of my networking knowledge as I’ve had to learn more about integrating networking solutions with application functionality. When I have to talk Continue reading
Pluribus Networks… Wait, where are we again?
I was privileged to visit Pluribus Networks as a delegate at Network Field Day 16 a couple of weeks ago. Somebody else paid for the trip. Details here.
Much has changed at Pluribus, I hardly recognized the place!
I quite like Pluribus (their use of Solaris under their Netvisor switching OS got me right in the feels early on) so I'm happy to report that most of what's new looks like changes for the better.
When we arrived at Pluribus HQ we were greeted by some new faces, a new logo, color scheme... Even new accent lighting in the demo area!
Gone also are the Server Switches with their monstrous control planes (though still listed on the website, they weren't mentioned in the presentation), Solaris, and a partnership with Supermicro.
In their place we found:
- The new logo and colors
- New faces in management and marketing
- Netvisor running on Linux
- Whitebox and OCP-friendly switches
- A partnership with D-Link
- Some Netvisor improvements
Linux
This was probably inevitable, and likely matters little to Netvisor users. When Pluribus was first getting off the ground, I was waiting for an OpenSolaris release that never happened. That Pluribus stuck with Solaris for as long Continue reading
Video Delivery Drove Comcast Toward Virtualization
It now runs major OpenStack clouds and works with AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Accelerite Takes On VMware, Nutanix with Hybrid Cloud Platform
It supports AWS, with Rovius Cloud for Google and Microsoft Azure available later this year.