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Technology
The Power of Peer-Assisted Streaming
 Peer-assisted streaming is the future of multimedia streaming over the internet. Traditional server-based solutions have all listeners download the entire stream from the servers of a radio station. This approach works well for small, static audiences. However, for successful programs with a large and dynamic audience the costs incurred by these solutions are high as they require a lot of infrastructure. With StreamForge technology the costs to serve large audiences can be reduced. The newly developed streaming solution follows a peer-assisted approach which means that each listener only downloads a fraction of the stream from the server and then starts to exchange these fragments with other listeners of the same stream. As a consequence StreamForge requires fewer servers to broadcast the program of a radio station. Despite this reduced server infrastructure the StreamForge solution scales extremely well and allows to serve much more parallel users with high-quality, interruption-free streams of their favorite radio program.
Key Features
Quality With StreamForge technology choppy, low-quality playback is a problem of the past. Using multiple communication channels and innovative signal coding strategies the StreamForge streaming solution enables rock-solid, high-quality streams yet unseen on the web.
Efficiency The StreamForge delivery network reduces a broadcaster’s streaming costs by a large factor. The audience is involved in the delivery of the radio program and thus less infrastructure suffices to serve even the largest audiences. Cost savings kick in at as few as two parallel listeners and scale with the size of the audience.
Scalability Serving large audiences is one of StreamForge’s strongest features. The delivery network was designed to avoid any bottlenecks and to minimize communication overhead. It easily handles flash crowds and scales up to millions of parallel listeners. No matter how large your audience is, the StreamForge solution handles the load.
Security Security is a key feature of the StreamForge streaming solution. Incorporating various newly developed security mechanisms both broadcasters and audience are protected against misuse. Fine-grained access control allows to limit stream reception to well-defined geographic regions. Strong cryptographic functions are employed to ensure the authenticity of the received streams.
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