If you’ve been tasked with live streaming an event, you know the drill. You test the internet in the days and weeks before the event, and all is well. You show up the morning of, and everything still looks good. Suddenly, the room fills up with conference attendees or employees, all leeching off of the in-house internet. Each person in the room starts to look like megabytes to you, and your brain starts running calculations. You check your bandwidth stats, and they’re fading fast. Your network is failing you.
No matter how rock solid internet seems at a venue, there’s always a chance of failure. And in our experiences, there’s no single cause of live streaming disruptions greater than poor network connectivity. You can plan out the greatest show on earth, create graphics and rundowns, have all the best cameras and switchers, and still fail because the internet just isn’t good enough. That’s where solutions like the Teradek Bond come into play.
We use Teradek’s encoders for our live streaming, as well as their Core platform for multi-platform distribution. At NAB NY, we had a chance to get our hands on their bonded network solution, the Bond Backpack. In essence, it’s allowing you to create your own network by piggybacking off of multiple cellular services and bonding them together. It’s a great fail-safe for live events, and it’s essential for events where internet isn’t available at all.
What’s your go-to solution for reliable network connection for live streaming video? Let us know in the comments!
