Cellular Bonding for Live Event Streaming: The State of The Art
追忆过去, 现在, 以及细胞键合的未来, we spoke with executives from four companies that manufacture and distribute cellular bonding products and services.
Cellular bonding products are key tools for live event producers, who use them to transmit their live streams to the cloud via these multiplexed cellular signals when Ether网 or Wi-Fi isn’t available, and to replace much more expensive satellite transmissions. 追忆过去, 现在, 以及细胞键合的未来, we spoke with executives from four companies that manufacture and distribute cellular bonding products and services.
Specifically, we corresponded via email with LiveU COO and Co-founder Avi Cohen. 我们采访了Cahit Akin, CEO of Mushroom Networks; Bob Hildeman (CEO) and Alex Telitsine (CTO) from Streambox, 公司.; and Jon Landman, VP Sales at Teradek. Here are the questions, and here’s what we learned.
什么是细胞键合?
对于那些刚接触这项技术的人, cellular bonding products use multiple cellular modems to combine 3G, 4G, LTE, and other cellular signals to provide increased throughput and signal resiliency. Many cellular bonding products can also combine other signals, 比如Wi-Fi和以太网, 为了更强的稳健性.
有趣的是, Streambox developed its first bonding products during the second Iraq War when a prominent news organization requested a product that could combine two 64Kbps Inmarsat satellite signals into a 128Kbps stream for both video and audio. Much of the news delivered remotely during that war was via bonded signals.
Although our primary focus is on live production, cellular bonding is used in a much broader range of applications. 例如, cellular bonding products provide Wi-Fi on trains and buses, provide data and video links for first responders, transmit signals from remote security cameras, and even provide data links for crop sensors on large farms.
How Effective Is Cellular Bonding in the Real World Today?
像所有技术一样, 细胞结合有一个不起眼的开端, and many early forays into livestreaming via cellular bonding met with more failure than success. 从那时起, services like Facebook Live and YouTube Live have resulted in much more contention for available cellular bandwidth from casual producers. This begs the question, “How robust is cellular bonding for mission-critical applications today?”
正如我们从受访者那里了解到的那样, we need to recognize that while there are many more users, 还有更多的塔, and they’re increasingly connected to the base station via high-bandwidth fiber, 增加塔容量. While you shouldn’t try to use a single connection for real production applications, Mushroom Networks的Akin表示, with a properly configured bonding solution (more on configuring later), you should be able to achieve a successful transmission more than 99% of the time.
Teradek的兰德曼有一个个人的例子. 2017年5月, he was in Times Square when one woman was killed and 22 injured by a car driven by a PCP-fueled suspect with “psychological issues.” Landman started transmitting video using a four-node Bond III unit and the company’s new H.265编码器. Despite transmitting from one of the world’s densest population centers, and competing with as many as 15 other bonding units 现在 on the scene, Landman managed to broadcast a consistent 1080p signal at 4Mbps.
很明显, 手机的可用性因国家而异, 甚至在一个国家的各个地区, though Streambox’s Hildeman points out that coverage is more than adequate for successful live transmissions in many countries. 举个例子, Streambox’s technology has been adopted by the Argentine Federal Police to fly drones over soccer matches, streaming security footage back to the authorities while competing for coverage with 70,000名狂热的球迷, many seeking to share their experiences via the various social media channels.