A live stream lives or dies on the delivery layer. This category tracks multi-CDN strategy, edge compute, origin caching, HTTP/3 and QUIC, low-latency HLS and DASH, and the performance monitoring tools that catch problems before viewers do.
Wowza published an explainer on contribution and delivery protocols in video streaming workflows. The article distinguishes ingest protocols such as RTMP, SRT, RTSP, RTP, and MPEG-TS from delivery protocols such as HLS, DASH, low-latency HLS, low-latency DASH, and WebRTC, and describes how media servers convert between them in a typical live streaming workflow.
Sony clarified its PlayStation DRM policy after a YouTuber's discovery caused concern, stating that a one-time online check is required for digital game authentication. This policy ensures digital games remain playable after this initial validation, addressing fears of content expiration.
Sony has begun rolling out a new DRM policy for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles, requiring a 30-day online check-in to validate digital game licenses. According to reports, players who do not connect their console to the internet at least once every 30 days could temporarily lose access to their digital games.
Datavault AI is expanding its edge computing network to 1,000 micro-edge sites across more than 100 U.S. cities, with each site hosting up to 48 GPUs for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The company's stock (DVLT) surged 14% following the announcement. The deployment represents a significant build-out of distributed GPU capacity at the edge.
Backblaze has released its Q1 2026 network statistics, analyzing traffic patterns from its B2 cloud storage platform. The data, from its B2 Overdrive program, shows a decrease in traffic to 'neocloud' processing partners and an increase in traffic to CDNs. The report also introduces a new geographical analysis of the network data.
ACI Communications has integrated its portfolio of broadband amplifiers with Harmonic's cOS Virtualised Broadband Platform. The integration makes ACI products part of Harmonic's multi-vendor connected amplifier ecosystem.
Fastly has introduced new Compliance Audit Reports to help customers streamline their audit processes. These reports provide evidence for various compliance standards including SOC2, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and ISO 27001, making it easier for customers to demonstrate adherence to regulations.
DigiCAP has detailed its Signaling Export Service (SES), a technology demonstrated with Sinclair at NAB 2026 to support ATSC 3.0 deployments. SES allows broadcasters to continuously publish their on-air signaling metadata to the cloud, creating a single service catalog for both RF broadcast and IP streaming paths from the same source. The goal is to eliminate metadata drift between the two delivery methods in a hybrid broadcast-broadband environment.
Emirates has announced a partnership with Starlink to equip its A380 fleet with high-speed satellite internet. The new service aims to provide passengers with significantly faster Wi-Fi, enabling capabilities such as uninterrupted video streaming at high altitudes.
The PC Blu-ray drive is considered effectively extinct as major manufacturers like Sony, LG, and Pioneer have ceased production of optical drives. The article's headline attributes the format's demise to the decline of 5.25-inch drive bays in modern PCs and complexities with hardware-based DRM.
AT&T has stated that a widespread network outage affecting its U.S. customers was caused by an error during a software update. The company confirmed the issue was due to "the application and execution of an incorrect process" and was not the result of a cyberattack.
Stegawave, an Irish provider of forensic watermarking, has introduced a new anti-piracy platform. The solution is designed to provide real-time forensic watermarking for live sports streams to help combat piracy.
Nagravision and Harmonic have partnered to integrate Nagravision's forensic watermarking into Harmonic's cloud streaming platform. The resulting cloud-native solution allows streamers to activate watermarking protection for live events on a per-event basis.
Sony has updated its licensing terms for digitally purchased PlayStation games, introducing a new layer of Digital Rights Management (DRM). The change requires the owner's console to perform an online validation check at least once every 30 days. Failure to connect to the internet for this check within the specified period will result in the games becoming unplayable.
An abstract for an upcoming research seminar details a new cross-layer architecture designed for next-generation interactive systems. The research, led by Dr. Abdelhak Bentaleb of Concordia University, argues that protocols like QUIC are insufficient and proposes a unified stack where networking, edge, and AI compute are co-designed. The approach uses AI for QoE-aware congestion control, multi-CDN orchestration, volumetric video streaming optimization, and pipelining video transport into Multimodal LLM processing to reduce latency.
The article highlights the critical role of robust optical fiber infrastructure in enabling 5G networks to deliver ultra-low latency and gigabit speeds, essential for high-quality content delivery and edge computing in streaming. It emphasizes how advanced fiber optics overcome traditional network limitations and support the demands of services like high-definition streaming and cloud gaming. The piece underscores the necessity for intelligent, automated optical management to handle dynamic traffic and maintain consistent, reliable high-speed connectivity for both industrial and consumer applications.
According to a CBRE Group report, India's data centre capacity is projected to grow by nearly 30% in 2026, adding around 500 megawatts (MW) of new capacity. Total investment commitments are expected to exceed $180 billion in 2026, up from $126 billion by the end of 2025. This growth is driven by 5G expansion, data localisation norms, and government incentives, including tax holidays and capital support for green data centres.
ACI Communications is integrating its Infinity broadband amplifiers into Harmonic's cOS Amply ecosystem, a platform for managing broadband networks. The joint solution combines ACI's 1.8 GHz amplifiers with Harmonic's cloud-native software to provide operators with centralized network monitoring and control. This partnership is intended to offer a more cost-effective upgrade path to DOCSIS 4.0 without requiring full infrastructure overbuilds.
This article explains the concept of consistent hashing, a fundamental technique used in distributed systems like CDNs and databases. It contrasts consistent hashing with simpler modulo hashing, which can cause 'cache stampedes' when the number of servers changes. The piece details how a 'hash ring' and 'virtual nodes' solve this by minimizing the number of keys that need to be remapped when servers are added or removed, thus improving stability and load distribution.
Delta Air Lines announced a partnership with Amazon Leo to install low Earth orbit satellite internet on 500 aircraft, with deployment beginning in 2028. The technology is intended to provide high-speed, low-latency internet for passengers, enabling activities like movie streaming and video calls. The agreement expands on an existing business relationship where Delta utilizes Amazon Web Services for cloud migration.
This article provides a technical overview of the WiFi 7 wireless standard, focusing on its Multi-Link Operation (MLO) feature which allows devices to use the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands simultaneously to improve speed and reduce latency. According to the article, real-world tests have demonstrated speeds of up to 1.7 Gbps on a laptop, with controlled tests using hardware like the UniFi AirWire reaching over 3 Gbps. The piece positions WiFi 7 as a significant enhancement for demanding applications such as 4K streaming and cloud gaming, while also noting challenges like hardware costs and compatibility.
At the FutureNet World conference, European telecom leaders from BT, CityFibre, and Orange debated their role in the AI ecosystem. Executives expressed uncertainty about whether they are simply 'plumbers' reacting to unpredictable traffic demands from hyperscalers, or if they can become 'partners' by providing trusted, high-capacity, and flexible connectivity for new applications like sovereign AI. The discussion highlighted changing network demands, such as symmetrical traffic and the need for software-like, on-demand bandwidth for training AI models.
IdeaNova and Cadami have partnered to create a software-based system that turns aircraft cabins into local content delivery network (CDN) hubs. The solution combines IdeaNova's Inplay Edge caching technology with Cadami's STACHUS distributed storage platform to improve onboard streaming performance by caching content across passenger devices. This approach aims to reduce reliance on limited satellite bandwidth for both licensed in-flight entertainment and OTT streaming.
An opinion piece by Rene Van Koll of Big Blue Marble argues that disaster recovery (DR) for large-scale live streaming is now mission-critical and must move beyond traditional CDN failover. Citing recent high-profile failures with UFC/ESPN and Viaplay's Formula 1 coverage, the author states that modern DR needs to address the entire interdependent workflow, from ingest to playback. The article highlights the importance of multi-CDN delivery, geo-redundant infrastructure, and cloud-based models to ensure service continuity as audience tolerance for failure diminishes.
The International Judo Federation has extended its partnership with SES for the global distribution of its live events and archive content. Under the new agreement, the federation will continue to use SES’s hybrid IP, fiber, and satellite network, as well as its Sports Content Orchestration Enabler (SES SCORE) platform. The services will deliver content to broadcasters and audiences in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Analysys Mason reports that access to the satellite constellations market remains limited despite high demand. Vendors are advised to align their strategies with national priorities and focus on scaling production. This trend focuses on the infrastructure development around satellite-based video delivery.
Hydrolix disclosed a reference solution built with Amazon Web Services that connects Hydrolix CDN Insights to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to enable natural-language querying of long-term quality-of-experience metrics using full-fidelity CDN data. The solution is positioned as an AI-assisted observability/analytics workflow for operations teams, with supporting documentation shared via an external blog and a GitHub project, but no commercial details or customer metrics were provided.
Boston low-power TV station WCRN-LD has launched 5G Broadcast operations under an FCC experimental license, following sister station WWOO-LD, described as the first 24/7 5G Broadcast station (launched September 2023). The article describes 5G Broadcast as an over-the-air method based on the 3GPP standard to deliver live TV and emergency alerts directly to compatible mobile devices without Wi-Fi or a cellular data plan, with commercial smartphones and receiver equipment targeted for Q3 2026.
Castanet Corporation announced a commercial-ready hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast Internet pilot network in Las Vegas at the 2026 NAB Show, following an earlier Silicon Valley pilot with Major Market Broadcasting. The company also opened its C5G Interactive Live Sports second-screen platform to the public and reported progress on VoDoS, a Video-on-Demand-over-Satellite consortium aimed at one-to-many satellite CDN distribution for D2C and wholesale use cases. Castanet says the system aligns with FCC regulations, can leverage LPTV spectrum, and its spectrum-owner consortium covers roughly 60% of the U.S. population.
Cloudflare discusses the evolving challenges to traditional bot detection methods due to AI assistants and privacy proxies. The company advocates for new accountability models, emphasizing client control and an open ecosystem of anonymous credentials. This approach aims to preserve user privacy while simultaneously protecting web origins from abuse.
Fastly's privacy-preserving edge infrastructure is supporting Google Private AI Compute. This integration enables secure and private access to Google's Gemini models. The collaboration focuses on leveraging Fastly's edge capabilities for AI computations.
Fastly's Threat Insights Report indicates that 49% of all web traffic consists of bots, with 99% of these bots being unwanted. The report suggests that organizations need to evolve their bot strategy to manage security and costs more effectively. The article provides insights into the nature of bot traffic on the web.
Fastly discusses Media over QUIC (MoQ) as a technology aiming to deliver real-time media with both low latency and scalability. The article posits that MoQ could achieve this by replacing traditional streaming segments with a more efficient delivery model. This technical development is presented as a potential solution to a long-standing challenge in streaming.
The article reviews updates to Google Media CDN over the past year, including a reported tripling of delivery capacity since early 2025 by combining Media CDN and YouTube capacity, with a focus on handling live-streaming traffic spikes. Google added caching/routing options such as Flexible Shielding with new shield regions (South Africa, Middle East, U.S.), expanded origin compatibility (HEAD support, larger max segment size, multi-part range requests), and introduced monthly savings plans for more predictable costs. It also launched a Monitoring as a Service (MaaS) offering aimed at providing real-time, event-focused operational visibility from origin to end-user metrics.
Wowza outlines Media over QUIC (MoQ), an in-development IETF publish/subscribe streaming protocol built on QUIC/WebTransport that targets sub-second live video delivery at large scale, positioning it as a potential single protocol spanning ingest and distribution. The article compares MoQ with RTMP, HLS/DASH (including low-latency variants), and WebRTC, and highlights MoQ’s relay-based fan-out, tracks/groups/objects data model, and browser support via WebTransport/WebCodecs. It also notes MoQ’s current limitations, including evolving drafts, interoperability/tooling gaps, limited hardware encoder support, and the need for hybrid fallback delivery, and states that Wowza has joined the OpenMOQ consortium to help advance implementations and testing.
Fastly announced the redesign of its Control Panel homepage. The update provides users with a centralized, dynamic view to access actionable insights on performance, security, account health, and spend alerts.
Fastly advocates for the use of technical precision over indiscriminate IP blocking as a method to combat piracy. The company states this approach helps protect an open internet without causing collateral damage.
Fastly has identified CVE-2026-23869 as a high-severity denial of service vulnerability affecting React Server Components. The company is providing information on the impacts, affected versions, and solutions for immediate protection, including a virtual patch.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) describes its development work on “Oracle Video @ Edge” (OVE), a multi-tenant live and premium video delivery service using Media over QUIC (MoQ) to address peak-concurrency live event delivery and “thundering herd” behavior. The architecture includes multi-protocol ingest (e.g., HLS over CMAF and SRT) normalized into MoQ object streams, a cloud-native relay fleet for regional fanout/autoscaling, and integrated telemetry aligned with standards like CMCD/CMSD, with edge egress that can convert MoQ back into CMAF segments and dynamically generated HLS manifests. The post positions OVE as moving from beta toward general availability, with stated next steps including broader CDN/ISP interconnects, player ecosystem support, capacity modeling, dynamic ad delivery, and DRM-based content protection.
AWS documentation describes Amazon CloudFront as a global CDN that accelerates delivery of static and dynamic content via edge locations, retrieving uncached objects from defined origins. It outlines core configuration concepts such as CloudFront distributions, origin options (including Amazon S3 and AWS Elemental MediaPackage), caching/expiration controls, and a choice between standard distributions and multi-tenant distributions for SaaS use cases. The page also summarizes CloudFront’s usage-based pricing model centered on data transfer out and request volume, with origin-to-CloudFront transfer free when using AWS origins.
This NAB Show 2026 preview outlines how IP-based and cloud-distributed media operations are increasing operational exposure for broadcasters and streaming platforms, elevating monitoring, security, and resilience to executive-level priorities. Sources from TAG Video Systems, Telestream, Broadpeak, the RIST Forum, Veset, and Tuxera highlight challenges including end-to-end visibility across layered IP networks, piracy/credential abuse during high-value live events, disaster recovery via cloud playout, and emerging content authenticity needs tied to synthetic media and provenance tools.
A Google Research paper presented at USENIX NSDI 2023 describes HALP, a heuristic-aided machine learning eviction policy for YouTube’s CDN DRAM cache aimed at improving cache efficiency with low CPU overhead. The authors report HALP has been running in YouTube CDN production since early 2022, reducing peak byte miss by an average of 9.1% with about 1.8% CPU overhead, and introduces an “impact distribution analysis” method to measure deployment impact under production noise.
Fastly announced new Compute pricing based only on requests and vCPU usage, designed to reduce costs and carbon footprint through efficient code. The service is available for self-purchase and includes free tiers. This update aims to incentivize more efficient software deployment on their edge platform.
Satellite broadcasting is evolving into a high-capacity distribution network, integrating with telecom services and leveraging advanced digital media formats like 8K to bridge the digital divide. It maintains its value for Direct-to-Home (DTH) in remote regions and is adopting hybrid models combining broadcast signals with internet connectivity for interactive features and Push VOD. Modern satellite systems are also being integrated into Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for pre-positioning content at the edge and ensuring high-quality UHD/HDR delivery.
The article discusses BISS-CA as a solution for securing live sports contribution feeds. It highlights that BISS-CA provides open and interoperable conditional access to prevent piracy at the source.
Bitmovin and Cloudflare demonstrated Media over QUIC (MoQ) playback at NAB 2026, showcasing an emerging IETF standard for sub-second latency live streaming at scale. Bitmovin integrated MoQ into its Player Web X as an isolated plugin, while Cloudflare deployed open-source MoQ relays across its global network, emphasizing an open infrastructure approach for the new standard.
Broadpeak summarizes a discussion with JioStar CTO Akash Saxena on engineering and operating live cricket streaming in India at very high concurrency, citing IPL peaks of 32M (2023), 63M (2024), and 55M (2025) streams and planning scenarios approaching 100M concurrent viewers. The article highlights a hybrid delivery approach combining public cloud CDNs with infrastructure deployed within telecom networks, along with in-house SSAI at scale, anti-piracy enforcement, and increasing operational automation for live-event reliability.
A consortium including Neutral Wireless and broadcasters such as BBC, France Télévisions, and RAI is urging mobile network operators to enable interoperable, cross-network control of 5G performance for live broadcast production. The group calls for implementation of CAMARA Quality on Demand (QoD) and QoS Profiles APIs via the GSMA Open Gateway/GMSA Fusion initiatives to allow dynamic prioritization of critical video, audio, and control flows in congested environments. Target availability is requested beginning in the UK (Q4 2026), followed by Italy, France, the Netherlands, and the USA, with pilots planned after go-live dates and an IBC showcase slated for September.
This article provides a detailed technical explanation of MPEG-DASH, an ISO-ratified adaptive bitrate streaming protocol, covering its architecture, how it delivers adaptive bitrate video, supported codecs, DRM via CENC, and comparisons with HLS. It also highlights Ant Media Server's implementation of LL-DASH via CMAF, multi-protocol ingest, and scaling capabilities for various use cases.
Red5 describes progress on its Media over QUIC (MOQ) implementation and says it plans to go live on Red5 Cloud with globally distributed MOQ relays running on CacheFly. The post also introduces a proposed new live media delivery approach called MOCK (Media Over Conjectural Kinetics), which conceptually models media fragments as "kinetic particles" and uses predictive reconstruction (including GPU-accelerated inference via NVIDIA CUDA) to target extremely low latency and reduced buffering behavior. Red5 says it is exploring how MOCK could integrate alongside existing MOQ and WebRTC workflows and intends to release early research/implementation under an Apache 2 license.
