Multicast Ingestion via Unicast Tunnels for Network Compatibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current multicast streaming infrastructure faces challenges in reliability and scalability, particularly in live streaming events, as it struggles with minor glitches and lacks robustness against network failures and unauthorized interceptions, especially when transporting multicast streams across networks that do not support multicast protocols.
Innovation Solution
The system leverages load balancer components and routers to transport multicast traffic over unicast networks using Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnels, enabling load sharing and redundancy by establishing communication tunnels with shared Anycast destination points, and includes mechanisms for error correction and encryption to ensure reliable delivery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multicast streams are transported across networks that do not support multicast protocols, then the network compatibility is improved, but the delivery reliability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces unicast tunnels as intermediary mechanisms to transport multicast streams across unicast-only networks. Routers establish unicast tunnels to forward multicast traffic, and ingress egress tunneling is used to encapsulate and decapsulate packets at network edges, enabling multicast compatibility without requiring multicast support in intermediate networks while maintaining delivery reliability through dedicated tunnel paths.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the multicast delivery path into distinct phases: reception at ingress routers, encapsulation in unicast tunnels, transmission through unicast network infrastructure, and decapsulation at egress routers. This segmentation allows each component to operate independently and optimally, improving overall reliability while maintaining network compatibility.
2Reliability
If redundant encoding pathways are implemented for failover, then the system reliability is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal unicast tunnel infrastructure that serves multiple functions: primary traffic delivery, failover routing, load balancing, and redundancy management. The same tunnel mechanism handles both normal operation and failure scenarios, eliminating the need for separate redundant encoding pathways while maintaining high availability through the unified tunnel architecture.
3Productivity
If multiple load balancer components are deployed for traffic distribution, then the load sharing capability is improved, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple load balancer components into a unified tunnel-based system where traffic distribution is achieved through the shared unicast tunnel infrastructure rather than complex coordination between separate balancers. The ingress egress tunneling mechanism provides implicit load balancing and traffic distribution across multiple paths without requiring explicit load balancer management, simplifying the overall system architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for processing multicast streams is disclosed. A router receives the multicast streams and communicates the streams via communication tunnels to a set of ingestion pipelines. Each communication tunnel can be terminated upon the ingestion pipeline receiving a multicast stream. The set of ingestion pipelines process and deliver the multicast streams across existing IP infrastructure for real time distribution.