Broadcasting Companies

Broadcasters and NREN’s:
an interesting combination
20-7-2017
Issues addressed
- The rationale behind connecting broadcasters
- Broadcasting organizations connected to SURFnet
- NREN-services provided to broadcasters
- Lessons learned from connecting broadcasters
- Future developments
The rationale
Broadcasters (national and regional) are:

&
publicly funded (Ministry of Education, Culture
Science (except for commercial broadcasters!)
 focused on innovation
 interesting content providers
SURFnet connects:
 Dutch National Public Broadcasting Organization
 Beeld & Geluid (archive with 700.000 hours of
material)
 Eight regional public broadcasting organizations
Beeld & Geluid: Storage,
archiving & distribution
Mediagateway
Regional (public)
broadcasters connected
SURFnet currently
connects 8 (of 14)
regional public
broadcasters
Services provided
Infrastructure:
- Network capacity (1G or 10G IP)
- Network availability
- Multicast support (live video)
- Lightpaths for storage/archiving
- SURFmedia (video on demand)
What is SURFmedia?
- Video distribution platform for
content providers (universities,
publishers, broadcasters etc.)
- Uploading and viewing available for
end-users (including students) of all
connected institutions
- Connected to the SURFfederation and
SURFgroepen (authentication &
authorization)
- Back-end: SURFmediacore
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SURFnet, grensverleggend netwerk voor hoger onderwijs en onderzoek
SURFmedia Functionality
- End-user:
- Search for content
- View Flash previews
- Review / tag material
- Create collections
- Content provider:
- Upload Windows Media, MPEG-4 en Flash
- HD supported as well
- Live TV channels available
- Manage content
- Access restrictions, based on realm
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SURFnet, grensverleggend netwerk voor hoger onderwijs en onderzoek
SURFmedia
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SURFnet, grensverleggend netwerk voor hoger onderwijs en onderzoek
SURFmedia
Facilitates inclusion of audio en video content for
educational purposes
http://www.surfmedia.nl
SURFmedia
SURFmediacore
End-user
Institution
SURFnet app
Proprietary app
< 1 GB
> 100 GB
Limited number of assets
(circa 25 – 50)
Collection
(large number of assets)
All assets searchable via
searchinterface SURFmedia
Assets not findable via
searchinterface SURFmedia
Access restriction available
(via SURFfederatie)
Proprietary access restrictions
available
Lessons learned



Broadcasting landscape in flux:

Public versus commercial

National versus regional versus local
Broadcasters require a range of services:

IP-transit to higher education and research institutions + end-users

IP-transit to “rest of the world”

Storage and archiving (lightpaths)

Distribution of streaming and live content (multicast, mediaplatform)
Live events can generate huge traffic volumes
Lessons learned


Contract model:

connection available for public broadcasters only (acceptable user policy)

standard contract conditions for traffic to/from higher education

fair-use conditions for traffic to/from “rest of the world”

acceptable use policy for end-users
Tariff model:

End-user accounts are standard 1 GB

Additional disk-space available on request of institution

Additional disk-space charged per extra GB/TB
Future : Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Specs Dutch (broadcasting) CDN:
 Decentralised video-distribution
 Video-servers located at ISP’s
 Initiative coordinated by AMS-IX

Inducement: Tour de France 2008
 48.000 concurrent viewers created a bit-stream of 40 Gbit/s.
Infrastructure scaled to max. 30.000 viewers!

Implementation:
 Optimise network & server usage
 Pro-active replication technology
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SURFnet, grensverleggend netwerk voor hoger onderwijs en onderzoek
CDN: the ‘multicast
killer’ ?
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SURFnet, grensverleggend netwerk voor hoger onderwijs en onderzoek
?