Lag-free Live Streaming Made Easy With Network Bonding
Blog Post
Live streaming as we all know is one of the most sought-after tools to broadcast important information, conduct remote education, foster product advertising, provide entertainment, and much more. The use cases of live streaming are infinite and over the last few years, live streaming has established itself as the most powerful tool for internet-based information exchange.
What is the most important factor of any live stream?
Yes, you’ve guessed it right! Its internet. The internet connection can make or break any live stream. It’s a good internet connection that determines the profitability of your live streams as well as the end-user experience.
A good steady internet connection delivers great quality footage and optimal experience whereas a somewhat shaky internet completely hampers the user experience. Live streaming is also a time-sensitive affair. Let’s say you are holding an important digital auction of real estate and your internet crashes. This will result in 2 things.
Firstly, the lag between the host and the receiver will result in a delay of crucial bid-related information that can result in financial losses both for the host as well as for the bidders of the auction. Secondly, bad internet also results in lower quality of streams which ultimately means the bidders might not be able to have a better look at what they are about to bid for resulting in chaos and eventually, bad business.
The story can be the same for a lot of time-sensitive live-streaming use cases. From news to live sports to betting to medical, where time plays a crucial part, providing lag-free live streaming becomes a necessity. However, the internet sometimes is not in your control.
Let’s say you are live streaming from a stadium using cellular data. With thousands of viewers, it also means thousands of viewers accessing the same bandwidth. This is bound to create saturation and the bandwidth will reduce. Often in such places, people observe poor internet quality despite having a full signal on their devices. Dedicated lan cables are one alternative to mobile live streaming apps.
In the media domain, news reporting happens in geographical areas with little to low internet bandwidth. Not all areas are 100% internet-enabled globally. Being dependent on wifi/cellular data is not exactly a wise choice while you are streaming remotely without a dedicated internet connection
Live streaming cannot happen without the internet and therefore we must combine all the resources that we have to live stream content and this is where network bonding comes into play.
Network bonding is one of the most reliable methods of internet transmission used in the live-streaming industry. Network bonding is nothing but using a separate piece of hardware to combine the bandwidth offered by multiple internet sources like a phone’s cellular network, wifi, ethernet, and more and use all of them to deliver a singular bandwidth channel.
Network bonding offers several be