I know I’ve been rather quiet lately, so I’m checking in with a quick blog post. The last few months have seen many backend updates and upgrades to our live streaming platforms. I’ll outline a few things that have happened below:

• Complete rewrite/update of the TCP socket engine for backend services. Far more stable and responsive.
• Complete rewrite of the client side API (sApi) server software (provides realtime data such as viewer count, stream goes off air/goes live, etc to the client)
• Complete rewrite of the archive management system.
• Built a much better remote server management system (allows restarting specific services remotely, monitor bandwidth, uptime, etc of each server)
• Accidentally fixed a memory leak in our video ingest software, one that has plagued us for many years and has been the cause of many video crashes.
• As a result of fixing the above memory leak, it has uncovered several “new” issues that were masked by the memory leak for many years. Those are being addressed. All are stability related issues.
• Rewrote the email confirmation system (formerly known as activation.)
• Expanded the metadata logged for each incoming stream. This helps us troubleshoot stream issues more easily.
• Expanded video ingest system to multiple bandwidth providers. We’ve been with Cogent for many years, now we’ve expanded to a more flexible blend of providers that has enabled a better experience over all.
• Expanded our video edge system into Europe for better latency/distribution to those outside North America.
• Over the last six months we’ve also ramped up the number of ingest points available for streamers, now totaling eleven points of presence. Streaming to the PoP (Point of Presence) that is physically closest to you allows for better stream stability for you and your viewers.

There are several other things to list, but it’s mostly tedious little things and day-to-day operation stuff. In a future blog post I’ll touch on what is currently being worked on, cover past issues as well as cover current known issues, and maybe a list of bug fixes.

– Mark