Caching keeps 50 million IPL streams from collapsing
This article explains how caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are essential for streaming live events like the Indian Premier League (IPL) to over 50 million concurrent viewers, preventing server crashes and bandwidth issues. It details how video is broken into small chunks and delivered via HLS or DASH protocols, enabling adaptive streaming. The author demonstrates how to observe these video chunks in a browser's developer tools.
Key Takeaways
- The article frames IPL delivery as a 5 crore concurrent-user problem, not a routine traffic spike.
- JioHotstar uses CDNs plus video chunk caching to keep live match streams from overwhelming origin servers.
- Each match is split into 2-10 second chunks and encoded in multiple resolutions from 240p to 4K.
- HLS and DASH are the delivery formats cited, with adaptive streaming used by JioCinema, Hotstar, YouTube, Netflix, and Twitch.
- Browser DevTools can expose the stream chunks by filtering Network requests for .ts files in HLS or .m4s files in DASH.
Why It Matters
The immediate takeaway is that live sports at IPL scale depends on edge caching and chunked delivery, not just bigger servers. The article ties that directly to JioCinema/JioHotstar’s use of CDNs, HLS, and DASH to keep 5 crore viewers from crashing the origin. It also places IPL in the same delivery model used by YouTube, Netflix, and Twitch, showing how standard streaming protocols now carry extreme live-event loads. The next concrete signal to watch is the Network tab behavior during a live match: .ts or .m4s requests arriving as 3-5 second chunks.
Read full article at medium.com
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