The State of Streaming Protocols - September 2014

WMSPanel team continues analyzing the state of streaming protocols. The first month of autumn is over so we can take a look at it.

September showed the expected increase of HLS share (which is nearly 62%) and decrease of RTMP (26%) and RTSP (~11%). Other protocols did not have significant changes. These metrics are calculated based on 768M views.

You can compare that with August stats to see the increasing share of HLS.

End-user access for WMSPanel API

WMSPanel has a set of APIs which allows requesting aggregated pre-processed data and take it into customer environment for further processing. Recent real-time and in-depth stats APIs give ability to request data on entire account level selecting data for all available servers and data slices.

Some of our customers need to provide access to their own clients so they could make their specific analysis. WMSPanel now allows that as well as account-wise API access. End user may now access data which is visible to his account according to data slice settings so his scope may be limited to some subset of stats. If a user is given access to several servers and slices, he may request specific slice and server.

This control has become part of users management feature set. To enable API for selected user, choose Control / Users management menu to see the list of users in your account.

Account's users management page.

Clicking on Edit link will bring a user details dialog. Click on API access check box to see API ID and API key. A user may use them for further requests.

User details with API access parameters.

You may re-generate API key in case of security concerns or just disable it any time.

Once the access is given, the user may go to Settings menu to API setup tab to see the API ID and generate the key for further usage. He may also control his own white list to access the API.

End-user settings for API access.

User will be able to send requests and get data according to his access level. You may give this access to some non-admin user as well as create separate admin user specifically for API requests.

Our team continues working on a Please also check full set of APIs. Let us know if you have any cases which need to be covered to build flexible streaming infrastructure.

Related documentation

Media servers reporting, WMSPanel API reference, Real-time stats API, In-depth stats API, WMSPanel users management, Daily stats push API, Pay-per-view framework, RTMP publish/unpublish notifications, Slices and branding in WMSPanel

Transmuxing Icecast/Shoutcast to HLS/RTMP/MPEG-DASH

Nimble Streamer has wide audio streaming feature set.

This includes various Icecast and SHOUTcast related features.

You can give any supported protocol as an input: Icecast and SHOUTcast, RTMP, RTSP and MPEG-TS.
These streams will be transmuxed using the same engine and they will be given as HLS, MPEG-DASH, RTMP, RTSP, MPEG-TS and Icecast.
This means Nimble can work both as a transmuxer for Icecast to HLS and as a re-streamer for Icecast. Notice that the result Icecast stream has same metadata tags as original stream.

Both MP3 and AAC codecs are supported.

To use it in your scenarios, follow these simple steps.

Dispersa streams monitoring history

When we introduced Dispersa streams availability monitor, we new that people need not only to monitor but also to track the performance of their streams. Bringing proper quality of service for streaming media business requires data for analysis.

Now Dispersa is able to store the history of check-overs for last 32 days and view it via easy to use chart. Being a premium Dispersa user, you may use Monitoring menu to see streams monitoring panel.

Streams monitoring dashboard.

Now click on a stream name to view the history. If some transmission wasn't available between some moments time, the chart will show the breakage. Each checkpoint, including private checkpoints, will have its separate history.

View stream availability history at all checkpoints.

View stream monitoring results over time.

Stream may be unavailable for certain period of time for some of checkpoints.

You may zoom to any time slot within stored period by picking range.

Viewing period details for stream monitoring.

If you'd like to have same statistics within your monitoring or analytic tools, use Dispersa alerts push API to get notified about streams going offline and online.

We will extend Dispersa with more QoS-related functionality so if you have any suggestions, just let us know about it.

Check other current and future streaming QoS features of Dispersa.

Related documentation

Dispersa streams monitoring, How to set up streams availability monitoring, Dispersa alerts push API, Adding private checkpoints for Dispersa, Allowing Dispersa to check WMSAuth protected streams, WMSPanel YouTube channel, End user reporting for media servers

The State of Streaming Protocols - August 2014

WMSPanel team continues analyzing the state of streaming protocols which we began previously. August is over so we can take a look at past month as well as at the entire summer time.

August showed the increase of HLS share (which is 59%) and decrease of RTMP (27%) and RTSP (~13%). Other protocols did not have significant changes and share the remaining 1%. These metrics are calculated based on 700M views from August.

The State of Streaming Protocols - August, 2014.

You can compare that to the metrics of all summer months. WMSPanel processed statistics about more than 2 billions of views during that time.

The State of Streaming Protocols - summer of 2014.

These stats are collected from 1100 media servers, including Wowza Streaming Engine (mostly 3.x and 4.x flavors) and Nimble Streamer.

We hope this snapshot will be useful for our audience and we'll continue analyzing protocols going forward



This report is brought to you by WMSPanel team.