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Does Cloudflare host my live stream !
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Does Cloudflare host my live stream !

Hi all , I know about Cloudflare stream , but I'm using regular plan ,
and i'm having Live streaming site broadcasting from my server , my question can Cloudflare receive my stream and deliver it to my visitors (the goal is reduce bandwidth ) ,
or Cloudflare just hiding my server IP , and my server still have to provide streaming data to each visitor .

Comments

  • pikepike Veteran
    edited August 2018

    Since streaming requires a lot of bandwith and traffic I don't think its included in the free plan.

    You could get some VPS with decent traffic. If you use rtmp you can configure nginx to restream from your source to each VPS and from each VPS to your clients. Set up DNS based loadbalancing et voila your traffic is now shaped along multiple servers.

  • jammyjammy Member
    edited August 2018

    @pike said:
    Since streaming requires a lot of bandwith and traffic I don't think its included in the free plan.

    It's not, and it's billed per minute of video.

    Storage: $5.00 per 1,000 minutes (prepaid)

    >

    You only pay for the length of your original video. Example: Even if your 10-minute video is encoded into 6 different bit rates, you will only pay for 10 minutes (instead of 60 minutes).

    Streaming: $1.00 per 1,000 minutes (postpaid)

    >

    You will only be billed each month based on how many minutes you stream.

  • @jammy said:

    @pike said:
    Since streaming requires a lot of bandwith and traffic I don't think its included in the free plan.

    It's not, and it's billed per minute of video.

    Storage: $5.00 per 1,000 minutes (prepaid)

    >

    You only pay for the length of your original video. Example: Even if your 10-minute video is > encoded into 6 different bit rates, you will only pay for 10 minutes (instead of 60 minutes).

    Streaming: $1.00 per 1,000 minutes (postpaid)

    >

    You will only be billed each month based on how many minutes you stream.

    I believe distinction should be made here - Cloudflare Stream requires you to upload video to then be transcoder and delivered specifically by Stream.

    If you are running a regular event via HLS (for example), these may flow through Cloudflare network, but are exempt from being cached due to the video nature. Cloudflare will not cache video segments, but you can use it to speed up delivery however your backend will still receive all of the designated traffic (no offloading).

  • daxterfellowes said: Cloudflare will not cache video segments

    That's what I was asking for , I'm using live HLS stream , if the site become popular it consume my bandwidth in days .

    pike said: you can configure nginx to restream from your source to each VPS and from each VPS to your clients. Set up DNS based loadbalancing et voila your traffic is now shaped along multiple servers

    I'm having this idea in my mind , my video stream is low quality (270 Kb/s) I don't know how much visitors LE VPS can handle

  • @inklight said:

    daxterfellowes said: Cloudflare will not cache video segments

    That's what I was asking for , I'm using live HLS stream , if the site become popular it consume my bandwidth in days .

    Your visitors will not be directly connected but it will be a 1-to-1 conversion for viewers, so I would suggest looking into an actual CDN service (perhaps @BunnyCDN, well respected here) to serve your CDN content (or stack CF on top of it, but not suggested for best geo routing).

    pike said: you can configure nginx to restream from your source to each VPS and from each VPS to your clients. Set up DNS based loadbalancing et voila your traffic is now shaped along multiple servers

    I'm having this idea in my mind , my video stream is low quality (270 Kb/s) I don't know how much visitors LE VPS can handle

    That greatly depends on what type of content you are pushing out - at that rate, I'm going to assume either audio-only rendition or 240p type quality. If video, take into consideration transcoding for video downgrade (if not streaming from source) as well as the bandwidth requirements (whatever your max bandwidth minus 15% overhead divided by your bitrate and see what user count you get there).

  • pikepike Veteran

    @daxterfellowes said:
    That greatly depends on what type of content you are pushing out - at that rate, I'm going to assume either audio-only rendition or 240p type quality. If video, take into consideration transcoding for video downgrade (if not streaming from source) as well as the bandwidth requirements (whatever your max bandwidth minus 15% overhead divided by your bitrate and see what user count you get there).

    Well nginx-rtmp takes close to no CPU or RAM and very little bandwith at that rate. With Hetzner, for example, you could write a script that sets up new cloud instances when needed (if #viewers/server exceeds a preset value).

  • inklightinklight Member
    edited August 2018

    In fact I'm expecting ~1000 active visitors for start ( if I becomes on top Google results they could jump to ~100,000 ) , I'll sponsor the site with ads to pay the cost .
    In fact I don't know what shared VPS top bandwidth are . a 1000 Visitors * 270 Kb/s ~ 264 Mb/s
    ,
    I could write (PHP script ) to split visitors between multiple server ( each server will mirror my original broadcast )
    =Edit= btw all thing are setup on my first server (nginx-rtmp & ffmpeg even the video player ) everything works perfect , I just worried about bandwidth .

  • If you're expecting a hundred thousand viewers I would highly recommend a dedicated server.

  • inklightinklight Member
    edited August 2018

    LowPingVPS said: I would highly recommend a dedicated server.

    OK what's about bandwidth does dedicated server handle ~(5k - 10k) visitors for start (Since I'm not expecting big amount of visitors soon )

  • I've used icecast for streaming and the cpu and ram footprint is pretty light. The limiting factor is always bandwidth. The amount of transfer speed you can get from a server depends on heavily on routing to the clients. That's the usual reason for a CDN: to put the endpoints where the clients are.

    5k to 10k visitors at 270 kbps is 1.35 to 2.7 gbps, which is not going to happen on any dedi or VPS with LET pricing. You're doing good if you can get 1/10th of that for any sustained period. You want a CDN, maybe a homebrew one.

  • willie said: You want a CDN, maybe a homebrew one.

    To be honest I only need a Network Line (to deal with bandwidth ) , I don't even need CDN since visitors comes from single geographic region

    willie said: 5k to 10k visitors at 270 kbps is 1.35 to 2.7 gbps

    So what's the price for such bandwidth ( the lower ) .

  • williewillie Member
    edited August 2018

    What is the geographic region where your viewers are, and can you put servers there? You probably want more than one.

  • inklight said: To be honest I only need a Network Line (to deal with bandwidth ) , I don't even need CDN since visitors comes from single geographic region

    You could do a homebrew type setup, may I ask where the users are located? Even if the audience is in mostly the same area, at 5-10k concurrent live viewers, you may start to run into bottlenecks other than network capacity.

  • Again my only experience with icecast, but it is easy to set it up for fanout to multiple servers, so you could have a few dozen VPS streaming to a few hundred viewers each. There will probably be some shakeout involved and again, costs will depend on where you are and what hosting is available.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    You are going to need to spend some pretty pennies either way.

  • alright guys first the region I'm targeting is MENA and latency are not important ,

  • vovlervovler Member
    edited August 2018

    The cheapest options I can think of:

    1) Get a couple of VPS in each region, and multiply that by different regions, and use a php script to geo+load balance the users.

    2) Same as option1, but use Route53 instead of a php script

    3) Use a cheap CDN like BunnyCDN

    Edit___________________________________________

    Read some of the comments. Since visitors are not spread worldwide. You can have the main server/vps and load balance the video delivery servers/vpses either with DNS or with a PHP script

    Thanked by 1GreenVine
  • vovler said: Use a cheap CDN like BunnyCDN

    Interesting to see your idea of livestreaming with BunnyCDN

  • @corbpie said:

    vovler said: Use a cheap CDN like BunnyCDN

    Interesting to see your idea of livestreaming with BunnyCDN

    Just read their FAQ, and they don't allow livestreaming https://bunnycdn.com/help/faq
    Oh well...

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    They should at least allow bunny related video....

    Thanked by 1inklight
  • inklight said: alright guys first the region I'm targeting is MENA

    That's a huge region and some parts will be more accessible than others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MENA#List_of_countries

    @William do you have any thoughts?

  • OK tried to reduce the video quality while having acceptable picture . I grab this setting from youtube 240p sample . so I can redo my calculation .

    -vb 151k -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -c:a aac -ab 25k -ar 44100

    The result is 176 Kbs video streaming , Assuming average visitor duration time ~ 1H that equal
    77.34 MB that for 1k Viewer 75.5 GB multiple by 5 (for 5K visitors ) that's 377.6 GB .
    if BunnyCDN or other CDN support Live stream that 22.5$ to 113$ (this for cheapest plan)
    Now it I use ovh dedicated server ( 1Gbs can handle 5957 online visitors ) which cost $105 , BTW dedicated server can handle visitors all day long so it not limited to peak hour , so I can serve extra visitors ( may double 5K ) .
    This is one of reasons I drop all CDN's services from the list

  • williewillie Member
    edited August 2018

    inklight said: Now it I use ovh dedicated server ( 1Gbs can handle 5957 online visitors ) which cost $105

    I wouldn't count on an OVH server being able to deliver 1gbps nonstop to MENA. Have you tested it?

  • youtube. oh no you cant stream illegal there.

  • willie said: I wouldn't count on an OVH server being able to deliver 1gbps nonstop to MENA. Have you tested it?

    That's the only option I have , anyway most of popular site their relies on American and European host companies and I never hear anyone complain .

    creep said: youtube. oh no you cant stream illegal there .

    I'm creating my own network which youtube/ other free providers not suitable for .

  • inklight said: That's the only option I have

    You better check whether it works then, before making your plans around it!

    inklight said: anyway most of popular site their relies on American and European host companies and I never hear anyone complain .

    You really have to find out what type of distribution they are using. They aren't likely just running a low end server in EU or the US and expecting the traffic to get all the way to MENA for every user in the quantity required. OVH has a CDN product that does have endpoints there though, I think.

    In short: run tests instead of assuming anything.

  • inklightinklight Member
    edited August 2018

    willie said: In short: run tests instead of assuming anything.

    Ok that's the point I'm still in first stage and my site at bottom of Google result , I'll use my current VPS (I expect it to handle 100~300 online visitors ) then I'll try other solution "and post my results here "
    Anyway thanks all for suggestion I guess I had better view on this business now .

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