Swarmcast Strives to Amplify Content Delivery

And if you’re lucky enough to be in an area of the world with even better connectivity, the possibilities of what can be transferred increase. In addition to the U.S., two of Swarmcast’s primary markets are Japan and Korea, where fiber-to-the-home networks and the resultant ultrabroadband connectivity are common. "Over there we’ve seen streams as high as 60-70Mbps. We can then deliver multiple simultaneous HD streams over that type of infrastructure," Chapweske says.

CDN Amplifier’s initial version does not add any additional reporting capabilities to monitor the quality of the end user experience beyond whatever is offered by the core CDN, but Chapweske touts its self-healing streaming as a key ingredient for ensuring successful video delivery. "If there’s any corruption or interruption that happens in the stream, our technology will actually repair that in real time," he claims. "We ensure that that content will be delivered to a user 100% intact. No CDN can guarantee that."

Getting Set Up
CDN Amplifier works with either streaming (both live and on-demand) or progressive downloading. Chapweske suggests that the decision on which direction to go depends primarily on how a company is set up, whether they’ve already invested in real-time encoders or if they have more of a batch processing environment. "It really comes down to what’s more convenient for them from a workflow perspective," he says.

CDN Amplifier is also compatible with every major media player and codec, including Windows Media, QuickTime, and Flash. It’s compatible with both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and it’ll even work in iTunes. Swarmcast also has beta versions of the software available on Max OS X and Linux, although they are primarily focused on the PC market.

To get up and running with CDN Amplifier, content owners first contact Swarmcast, which then takes the content and provides the content owners with a link to put on their respective websites. "This link is special HTML code that will cause content to be delivered both from their CDN and amplified by our service," says Chapweske. "What we’re really doing is offering this type of technology and solution in a fashion that essentially requires zero integration. No switching to an alternative CDN is necessary. You just host content like you always have."