The Royal Wedding Was a Hoot (Thanks to Flash Media Server and RTMP)
On April 29 of this year, the world, (well, a little less than a third of the world, ~2 Billion people) witnessed the marriage of Catherine and William live as the Royal Wedding was broadcast to the masses from the U.K. A significant number of these viewers (over 3 Million concurrent viewers) successfully viewed the event live by streaming video from live content providers such as Akamai, UStream, YouTube Live, and Yahoo that utilize Flash Media Server and the RTMP protocol. Akamai reported a peak of 2.9 Million concurrent streams, a number which is nearly double that of its previous record-1.6 Million streams for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. UStream also had impressive numbers to report, with 330,000 concurrent streams coming through their system for the event. Yahoo also reported record traffic, with over 50,000 requests made per second, 27 Million video streams, and 2.6 Million live streams that day.
Image taken from gigaom.com
Despite fears that an event of this magnitude would strain the delivery capabilities of the internet to the point of failure, there were no reported issues related to content streamed with Flash Media Server. This successful display of streaming prowess is even more impressive when you take into account that the Royal Wedding’s demands on live streaming caused a 100% increase in RTMP usage, and represented 4% of all internet activity for that day. It was also reported that non-live Flash video streaming utilizing other protocols grew only marginally.
This is, of course great news for consumers of streaming media, considering the 99% penetration of the Adobe Flash Player on computers worldwide. The last Five years have shown remarkable improvements in what consumers can expect from the quality of streaming media experiences, regardless of the amount of concurrent users accessing the media. Indeed, considering that only Five years ago, there were virtually no live streams being served by Flash, it is safe to say that Adobe is on an upward trajectory, and will no doubt be able to handle the large-scale, streaming media events yet to come.
