Why People Want IP Bonding for Broadcasting?

When it comes to live broadcasting, an overwhelming majority are talking about link reliability and many of them are complaining about network congestion or disturbance when they are using mobile network for transmission. The problem seems rather straightforward, but how can we resolve it?

IP Bonding: Definition and Importance

When you are making outdoor news-gathering or covering a live sports event, it is not feasible to find a wired network to transmit your video back to studio and therefore you need mobile network for transmission. However, such wireless connections, including cellular network, Wi-Fi, etc. are usually not reliable, especially in some underdeveloped areas, and therefore usually cause pixelated content or buffering, which is unacceptable in live broadcasting. Hence, the idea of IP bonding is proposed to solve this problem.

IP bonding is to bind two or more connections together to provide elevated bandwidth and reliability. The key concept is aggregation, which means the capability of the new link is the sum of every single link. What makes it important here is IP bonding can largely improve the reliability of the “first mile” of video transmission, where broadcaster deliver the video from camera to production studio. Mobile networks are usually not that stable compared to wired network, and the available bandwidth of it is always limited. Besides, relying on a single connection is very vulnerable because factors like location, weather condition, network traffic, etc. tend to cause bandwidth fluctuations and link error especially when you are covering live sports event or doing outdoor news-gathering. According to statistics, more that 70% of live video subscribers tend to unsubscribe from video that has issues like buffering, fuzzy content, and slow startup time. Hence, ensuring the stability of transmission link is very important for live video production. Although, building a private link is possible, IP bonding is a better choice with less investment and greater flexibility.

When and Where IP Bonding a Better Choice?

As mentioned before, IP bonding is advantageous especially in some scenarios:

Live Sports

When covering a live sports event, the cameramen always need to walk around to capture the best moments of athletes. Thus, they need to use cellular network where wired network is inaccessible. In a big stadium, many producers and audiences will seek for cellular transport simultaneously, which makes single connection not stable, and therefore, using multiple connections for transmission is a better way to protect your transmission link.

Breaking News Gathering

The journalists are always on the move when covering breaking news. Walking here and there means you cannot get stable cellular connections and wired connections usually not available. Using IP bonding can help journalists transmit their live video with higher reliability and lower cost.

?Remote Areas

Sometimes reporters go to remote areas for news gathering, where network infrastructure is underdeveloped. In this case, relying on single connection is impossible due to is low capacity. Combining multiple connections together for transmission is one of the best ways to transmit your content accurately.

?Low-cost Production

For budget-sensitive studios, lowering expenditure in every procedure of video production is of great importance. Compared to fiber or satellite, binding several cellular networks is cheaper. Meanwhile it can provide sufficient bandwidth for high-quality live video transmission.

Best IP Bonding Techniques for Broadcasters

Thanks to advancements in video technology, we have seen a variety of IP bonding methods are emerging in the market (e.g., RIST, LRT, SST). Sumavision has also imported this technology in all our portable live video encoder kits, SP10, SP03, ST300, SC05, etc. The Sumavision IP bonding technique is called CSF, namely Channels Sharing the Future, which is able to combine 5G, 4G, Wi-Fi, wired networks together for transmission.

The superiority of CSF owing to some of its superb features:

Adaptive Bit Rate Encoding

Using SCAE (Sumavision Channel Adaptive Encoding) algorithm to do real-time bitrate adjustment based on network bandwidth.

Acknowledge & Resend

Detection after receiving data packets, packet loss retransmission mechanism.

Dynamic Forward Error Correction (FEC)

Using dynamic forward error correction to determine the amount of redundant data according to error rate, saving bandwidth by reducing redundant data when the connection is stable.

Packet Ordering

Packet number sorting, receiver reassembly.

With CSF enabled, Sumavision live video production toolkit can prevent any annoying influence of network congestion and instability, hence largely improve the reliability of your live broadcasting. To learn more about our IP bonding techniques and how we can help you build a safe and high-efficiency live video production workflow, please visit www.sumavision.com.