ECDN or Enterprise Content Delivery Network is an organization's globally distributed network of servers deployed for the purpose of faster content delivery by replicating the digital content strategically across all the servers in the ECDN. The digital content is then made available in many places, and when a user accesses it, the content from the nearest server is delivered and served to the user. 


Without the ECDN, there are high chances of encountering the problems of network congestion and delayed delivery due to sudden and numerous requests from the users when they all try to access the content at the same time.


VIDIZMO uses the ECDN to distribute live as well as on-demand video content. VIDIZMO allows organizations to configure their own Origin and Edge servers for an uninterrupted and fast live or on-demand streaming experience.


Streaming Server Options

By default, VIDIZMO provides four possible ECDN configurations to its customers:

  1. General Streaming Server Provider
  2. Wowza Streaming Server Provider (On-premise)
  3. Wowza Cloud Streaming Server Provider
  4. VIDIZMO Streaming Server Provider


This article discusses the ECDN Node configuration of the Wowza Cloud Streaming Server type. Users opting to utilize their cloud Wowza CDNs as streaming endpoints can configure this option.


Before you Start

  • ECDNs can only be configured at the Account level (main Portal), and are inherited from this main Portal to all the sub-portals where these servers can be utilized but cannot be added, updated or deleted.
  • Only users with Administrator or Manager roles can view, edit, delete and add ECDN Nodes in the Streaming Server configuration.


Steps

1. From the Portal's Homepage

i. Click on the navigation menu on the top left of your screen

ii. Expand Admin tab

iii Click on Control Panel




2. From the Manage Portal navigation pane in Control Panel:

i. Select ECDN

ii. Select ECDN Nodes

iii. Select Add Server to add a new ECDN node




3. On the Add ECDN screen:

i. Select Wowza Cloud as your Streaming Server Provider

ii. Provide a Title for the Streaming Server

iii. Specify the Node Type that you wish to configure:

  • Creating a node of type Origin in case of serving on-demand content will create it as an edge node because the uploaded content resides at the storage provider from where it is originally served. While in case of live streaming, you actually create an origin server since the encoder pushes the stream directly to this server
  • Select Edge to configure a server that locally caches content form Origin Server and serves them to the end-users

iv. You can Enable/Disable the use of this server by the toggle button

v. Select the physical Location where you want the server to be based

vi. Select the Publishing Point Mode that needs to be configured for this streaming server. Choose from the following two options in drop-down:

  • Push: In case of push, it expects video stream to be provided to it and will primarily reroute it to other servers in the CDN
  • Pull: If the stream is pulled, it will fetch video stream from a remote server

vii. Specify the Server Type based on the type of content that will be served through this server. The options available are:

  • On Demand: For on-demand streaming of content
  • Live: For live streaming of content
  • Live and On Demand: For both live or on-demand streaming

viii. Provide the REST API URL, which is Wowza's REST API URL required to make API calls to Wowza Cloud Streaming Engine. For example: https://api.cloud.wowza.com/api/v1.2/ 

ix. Select Authentication Type. The options available are:

  • API Key: Requires an API Key to authentication and authorization
  • Bearer: Requires JSON Web Token to authentication and authorization

x. For API Key provide the API key which is used to authenticate HTTP requests. API Key is a secret token submitted as part of the web service or similar requests to identify the origin of the request when connecting to the server. The API Key cannot be changed or deleted.

xi. Provide the Access Key, like the API key, it is also used to authenticate your requests to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service.

xii. Click on Save to save your ECDN node


Note: Both Wowza API Key, Access Key and JSON Web Token Token can be found in Wowza Cloud interface. For more details, read Locate an API key and generate an access key.


A notification will appear stating Streaming Server Added Successfully.




To know more about configuring a live stream in VIDIZMO, read:

How to Setup Publishing Point for Live Streaming using Wowza Cloud Streaming Server

How to Schedule a Live Webcast in VIDIZMO