Live Video Broadcasting of Sporting Events - SpeedFusion Cellular Bonding

Design Lab
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](http://www.peplink.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Streaming-Video-MOTG-B380.png)

Environment:

  • Mobile camera crew, delivering live coverage of sporting events. Crew travels around the world to cover different events.

Requirement:

  • Live video streaming to broadcaster’s media server through cellular networks.
  • Bandwidth bonding between multiple 3G or 4G LTE connections as needed.
  • Ability to quickly switch between different providers while traveling, possibly on-the-fly.
  • For mobility, all equipment needs to fit within a single backpack.

Recommended Solution:

  • Video encoder sends compressed video stream to a MAX On-The-Go equipped with 3G/4GLTE USB keys.
    • Camera crew can quickly switch USB keys as needed.
  • The MAX On-The-Go sends the stream to a nearby Balance 380 through a SpeedFusion connection.
  • The Balance 380 connects to the broadcaster’s streaming server via landline.

Devices Deployed: MAX On-The-Go, Balance 380

4 Likes
2

I am interested in this setup. Please advise on a portable power source and a power cable for the MAX OTG running with 4 USB dongles attached pushing video through for 4 to 5 hrs.

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Hi,

Please refer here.

1 Like
4

I use broadcast batteries, such V-Lock from Sony. But I have built a full hardware to accommodate battery plus the encoder (which is proprietary of my company)

But definitely any battery from 12v - 24v Will work!

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5

This is extremely decent and nice post…you shook posting it…thanks a considerable measure for posting it…!!

Awesome…!!:cool:

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Hello, I’m trying to use Peplink solution this way since 2013 year. I’m testing Max On-The-Go with 2-4 bonded LtE sticks on one side and Balance 210 on another with always updated firmware. And the results are very poor. often 1 usb stick without speedfusion better, than 2-3-4 with it.

I want to ask:

  1. May be Peplink company has optimized the technology or made some improvements last 3 months?
  2. Hope Peplink will provide full instructions of usage their equipment as shown on the picture, because i’m trying to it, and the result is very bad.

Thank you!

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Hi SlavaDyakonov. FW 6.2 which is in Release Candidate status has a number of improvements for cellular WAN management, including latency cut off and packet loss pull back. These can help considerably when using cellular links with SpeedFusion Bonding as high latency and latency variation are the biggest cause of reduced bandwidth availability over bonded cellular.

You can read more about that on this post Peplink | Pepwave - Forum

Also this configuration is in use by Pedro84 who has posted above and I’m sure he won’t mind adding his comments to this.

Thanks,
Martin

1 Like
8

I have downloaded the Speedfusion Cloud Evaluation License pack installed in my Amazon Cloud. Now I need to configure my Pepwave MAX On-The-Go MAX-OTG-U4-SF to establish Speedfusion bonding to stream my vidoeos live. Appreciate someone can describe the configuration settings at Max OTG end to bond with Amazon cloud where the Speedfusion Server Software solution is installed. Please help

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I’m interested in a similar setup.

I’ve purchased a MAX 700 recently and I’m considering pairing it with the Balance 380 on the receiving end.

My situation requires that I send my digital signals from a remote location where only 4G/3G cellular connection is available to a receiving server that has no Balance router. But since no single one 3G/4G connection is stable enough, I want to see if a SpeedFusion VPN may solve that issue of a fast and stable upload from the broadcast site to the Balance 380 which is using a land-line internet or fibre, then out to the receiving server (Ustream/Youtube/Zixi server/Flash Media Server, etc.) - which is the final destination.

Comments are most welcomed.

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10

Hi,

SpeedFusion technology makes this possible by bonding the bandwidth of multiple cellular services. Please refer here for better undrstanding.

We do support WAN Smoothing in latest firmware wihch to reduce the impact of packet loss. Please refer here for the explanation.

1 Like
11

I have tried for several years to find a reliable solution to stream live video content, and am taking a look at current equipment again. This has brought me to the Peplink doorstep, and I am working on testing out a development system with Peplink equipment. The documentation does not answer all questions, and the streaming media websites/forums do not have much about success stories with Peplink so I am on my own.

As best I can tell, SpeedFusion is the technology used to bond together several small and unreliable connections. From what I read, I need SpeedFusion at both ends. On one end I can use a software solution such as FusionHub in places like Amazon EC2. Also a hardware solution. I now have a BPL 310 but it is HW version 1, with firmware 5.4.x. The manual says that FusionHub works with version 5.1 forward. I logged into the 310 and it indeed has FusionHub menus so I assume I can use this and/or Amazon/Fusion hub on the close end of the backhaul for a proof-of-concept trial.

So one question I cannot seem to answer is this. 1) Will a version 5.4 firmware work on the receiving end with something sent with 6.2 on the sending end? 2) Will normal Speedfusion router on the receiving end work with “Wan smoothing” Speedfusion on the field end? In other words are your Speedfusion products cross compatible with each other, or is there some type of version matrix I need to consider?

I am considering a trial of the Max on the Go product on the field end to send to the 310 in my studio, or Fusion Hub in Amazon cloud. While Max on the Go has a “SpeedFusion” bonding configuration, but the literature seems to suggest all it does is the Wan smoothing, and is not capable to actual SpeedFusion bonding. 3) Is that correct or can it do both?

  1. In some places it says that Peplink will not allow upgrades unless you have an extended warranty, which is very costly. But elsewhere it says that Peplink recently changed their policy and this is no longer required for firmware? 5) Is there a matrix of which products can be firmware upgraded without cost, and which will not. Or do your users basically get one year of upgrades only?

Then my chief question is to try and estimate the likely throughput with the Max-on-the-go or higher products such as the 700. There is little information about what users actually experience in field conditions competing with a room full of people on cell phones. In this forum, SlavaDyakonov complains that he cannot get much better than the speed of 1 USB by itself. There are about five posts on Amazon from Max on-the-go router users who also complain that they cannot get much more than 1 or 2 mbs with several cell connections “bonded” even after spending hours with Peplink seeking solutions. So my last question is this. What typical bandwidth are Peplink users finding in the field. At the end of the day, I need to stream HD video which with high compression will need about 5-10 mbs and I cannot read anywhere that four WAN smoothed or SpeedFusion bonded cell links can get that high. All I need to do is get it from the field to my office, and I have a redundant gigabit fiber from there.

Many thanks to any answers to these questions.

1 Like
12

Upgrade comes free, but is limited for legacy hardware, like your Balance 310 which is on revision 1.

Fusionhub is the VM platform that can offer Speedfusion capabilities to your other locations running with our products.

Your 310 will have Speedfusion menus, and will be able to establish Speedfusion with our products running v6.
Features should be limited to what your Balance 310 on fw ver.5 can supported as this is a 2-ways thing.

It is capable of WAN smoothing (sending same packet over all WANs to improve the receiving end), and not bandwidth bonding, which is more meant for 2-ways communication.

Also take note when using USB dongle, which is sometimes prone to problems when concurrently using it for long hours. That’s where we have the MAX routers with in-built modem for consideration.

We have a Speedfusion best practice handbook which you should take a look. Link as follows.

1 Like
13

Thanks Kevin, that narrows down my choices. So instead of the Max -on-the-go I am considering the Max 700 which will give me true SpeedFusion bonding rather than Wan Smoothing. Then I assume that the Max 700 configured for bonding would connect to either the (HW-1) 310 with FW 5.4.x OR the Fusion hub up in the Amazon Cloud EC2. Thus I would have redundant choices on the destination of the backhaul. Please confirm that I can have bonded cell up into the internet, and then down to the 310 on my Gbit fiber. This would allow video broadcasting from the field to my office at the combined pipe speed less additional overhead per your paper. If so I will buy the Max 700 for my development testing.

Then one final question puzzles me. I have configured many routers but never in this particular configuration. Assume I want to end up streaming to YouTube live. I understand the path from the Max 700 in the field, over several cell connections, maybe ethernet or wifi if available uplink, then across the internet to my office fiber downlink connected to the 310. That would be similar to a hardware to hardware VPN. BUT from there I assume there is some routing configuration that would combine the packets, and then send it back out the 310 to YouTube based upon the routing table for the YouTube IP number. I am confused about how the data goes from the 310 after the backhaul and demuxing, back out the 310 to its final destination (YouTube) since obviously I cannot install Peplink hardware at YouTube. If I cannot do this with the 310, I do have other external IP#s and routers on my office fiber, and could possibly route from the 310 to another router, and then out back onto the internet then to YouTube.

I would assume the same would be the case with the Fusionhub in the Amazon Cloud. The routing would be from the Max 700 in the field, backhauled to the FusionHub on an Amazon EC2 server, and then back out of that server to the Amazon backbone to its destination at YouTube.

I just want to make sure that these three products (new version of Max 700, and Fusionhub, and older 310 with 5.4.x) can be setup this way, not necessarily how it is done. So long as it can be done, I can likely figure it out when the products all get here. Am I on the right track with this configuration?

And thanks for your paper and tips. There is a reason I am interested in the USB LTE modems rather than in-built modems. I have by studying this current Peplink deployment, discovered that there have been not-so-well-known advances in G4 LTE technology. Verizon now has since about 2104 XLTE which supposedly is the addition of a different radio frequency band that works when there is too much congestion on the normal (non XLTE) bands. Older modems and cell phones do not have XLTE capability. It would be complex to discover if the Peplink in-built modems are XLTE capable now or not. Worse yet, I expect more advances like this before G5 technology rolls out, but if I have in-built modems those cannot be readily swapped out to newer ones for whatever each carrier comes up with. So, by using USB dongle, it is future proofing the Peplink to some degree.

For the same reason I am favoring Peplink over Teredek since Teredek tends to include the video encoder, and decoder as part of the bonding hardware. While this is handy and convenient, the encoder CODEC’s are always changing. Indeed H.264 is popular now, but is soon to be replaced with H.265 when they get licensing worked out. So by having the modems, and encoders/decoders as separate hardware from the router, I am hoping that I can just replace modems, and encoders over time, but still keep the Peplink equipment going, especially if I buy redundancy in case of breakdown or failure. An all-in-one black box solution leaves me behind when newer cellular or video CODEC solutions roll out.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who disagrees with this logic or my anticipated configuration, as my moving from on demand to live broadcasting is new to my company and we are in a steep learning curve on this.

Thanks

Rene

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Yes, with Speedfusion bonding setup between your MAX 700 and 310, you can achieve the bonded cell up and down to your 310. In short what Speedfusion does is split up your data and transmit across your available WANs. Do take note of the Latency section under Best Practice guide, as it’ll affect the overall performance of the SF tunnel.

Our latest firmware version allows you to create default route 0.0.0.0, but it’s not support on your current 310 hardware. It should be possible on Fusionhub (I need to double-confirm this for Fusionhub).

I looked UP XLTE and it seems to refer to a specific frequency that VERIZON bought. I’m not sure if our models with built-in modem support that frequency, but we do list out all the supported frequency under our products section. We’re constantly improving as well by adding more bands, and also road map for upcoming stuffs like cat6 LTE as well.

The way I see it, hardwares aren’t built to last, partly due to how fast technology evolves. Imo I think hardware is considered effective as long as it can last like 5 years or something.

Aa for solutions, I have seen people who go for dedicated hardware, as well as those who preferred all in one. The scale of your operation and budget you have will probably affect which solution to go for too =p.

1 Like
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Thanks for your reply. I decided to buy the Max 700 and learned from your dealer that the current model is no longer in production, and a new hardware version is currently in manufacturing, and hence none are available, old or new. Do you have an estimate of when they will start shipping?

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Hi Rene,

The MAX 700 is expected to be ready for shipping in early October 2016. For detail delivery date, please check with our reseller who you make request/order from, or you can send the inquiry to [email protected].

Thanks and regards.

1 Like
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Hi @Alan!
Does MAX On-The_Go support Bandwidth Bonding? The graph and @Alan @SlavaDyakonov’s post show, that it does, but the SpeedFusion Model Comparison table does not confirm this info… So my question is: Can I use multiple USB 4G sticks and bond their bandwidth with MAX OTG?

Thanks,
Jakub

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The MAX OTG supports Hot Failover and WAN Smoothing but not Bandwidth Bonding. Thanks

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