Earlier this month, the live-streaming company Red5 announced that they would partner with Limelight Networks to optimize and expand distribution of media to larger audiences. Their partnership combines Red5’s WebRTC-based low-latency streaming for real-time video delivery with Limelight’s extensive content delivery network.
Red5 CEO and President Chris Allen noted that, “Limelight has one of the most extensive content delivery networks in the world, and we built our WebRTC solution with this kind of scale in mind. Their network and our software are a perfect match. This is a great opportunity for both companies to make a huge impact in how video is delivered today.”
A few months back, we profiled Red5 through a series of interviews on how they reverse-engineered RTMP and a deep-dive into their autoscaling technology. For those who are unfamiliar with Red5, their platform and sub-second latency place them in the same tier as media giants like Wowza for their real-time streaming capabilities.
Red5’s WebRTC implementation includes built-in failover protection for handling video and audio streams from different networks and launching it on any device. This provides a solution to the lack of a universal media player that has resulted from the phasing-out of Flash. With WebRTC failover, publishers and subscribers using WebRTC on unsupported platforms to failover to Flash or HLS if the device or browser cannot broadcast with WebRTC.
By partnering with Limelight, this pool of subscribers has now widened considerably, allowing Red5’s versatility and sub-second latency to be leveraged by Limelight’s global CDN. As Steve Miller-Jones, Senior Director of Product Management at Limelight Networks, noted, “Our partnership with Red5 will accelerate our global support for WebRTC-based low latency streaming, where we see demand increasing all around the world. Working together, we’ll be able to provide customers with a superior low latency live streaming experience.”