Publishing RTMP to Akamai

Even though Nimble Streamer allows building live streaming networks, there are cases when some external CDN needs to be used to provide additional geo coverage and off-load your network during peaks.

This is why we added Akamai CDN RTMP publishing support in Nimble Streamer. It's based on RTMP re-publishing scenario with a few additional steps.

Here is the setup instruction.

Enable interleaving compensation

Akamai requires synchronized video and audio in your live stream, so you need to enable interleaving compensation for the source application for further publishing. This application needs to be used as a target for your encoder or transcoder which you use as an origin for your stream.

Another requirement for the source stream is that its time stamps must be sequential.

Now, being logged into WMSPanel, go to Nimble Streamer -> Live streams settings top menu. Open application settings.

Now click on Add application settings to open the dialog below. Here you will enter the name of the application that will be publishing RTMP stream to Akamai. So your encoder needs to have that stream as output.

Adding application for further Akamai publishing.

You can define the application name as well as its publishing login and password if required. Selecting RTMP protocol from the list of check-boxes should be enough.

Click on Enable interleaving compensation and fill in the following field as follows:

• Min. delay to 0
• Max. delay to 10000
• Max queue items to 500

Then save this setting to the designated servers. Your apps list will be appended with new item.

Notice that you also need to define interface and port for RTMP publishing in Interfaces tab as well.

Now your stream is ready for re-publishing to Akamai.

Set up re-publishing with Akamai authentication

Go to Republishing tab

Now click on Add Akamai RTMP button to see the dialog below.

Here you need to fill the fields:

• Source application - this is the app which you previously created.
• Source Stream - this is the stream created by your source encoder.
• Akamai Stream ID is provided by Akamai
• Destination address and Port are also defined by Akamai
• Destination application an Stream are defined by yourself.
• Authorization schema will be set to "Akamai"
• Login and Password must be known to you.

Saving these changes you'll see new entry in the list.

That's it. Once you start streaming from your origin encoder, you'll get the stream in the CDN. Use the playback URL provided by Akamai.

Other useful features

You can see some other examples of RTMP republishing:

• Re-publishing in Nimble Streamer
• Streaming to Facebook Live
• Streaming to YouTube
• Streaming to Periscope
• Publishing to Limelight CDN
• Publishing to Edgecast CDN
• Re-publishing to Wowza with proper authentication and ModuleSecureURLParams module.

You may also consider re-publishing incoming RTMP streams with inserted ads. Nimble Advertizer provides a framework for inserting pre-roll and mid-roll ads into live streams for further output via RTMP, SLDP and Icecast with custom business logic and per-user ads. So if you create RTMP stream with ads insertion and pull it for further re-publishing, you can provide your target CDN with properly sponsored content.
Visit Advertizer web page to find out more about server-side ads insertion functionality.

If you need to change the outgoing content in any way, like change the bitrate, use our Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer to transform. It has high performance and low resource usage.

For other live streaming scenarios, check our live streaming use cases.

Having that, you can create flexible delivery chains using Nimble Streamer for media hubs and WMSPanel for easy-to-use control panel. Install Nimble Streamer if you still haven't done that and contact us if your streaming scenarios need any updates of described functionality.

Related documentation

Live Streaming features, Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer, RTMP feature set, Build streaming infrastructure with Nimble Streamer,