Caton redefines real-time content delivery with Media XStream
Caton Technology has introduced Media XStream, a new approach to real-time IP content delivery. Designed for broadcast-grade quality and cost-effectiveness, it is also said to be extremely reliable, with SLAs in excess of six nines and zero error services already in use.
Media XStream is a cloud-native service which runs on Caton Cloud, a globally distributed cloud architecture. While general cloud services are designed for sharing processing and storage and therefore rely on a small number of very large data centres, Caton Cloud is designed from the ground up for efficient connectivity and delivery.
Caton Cloud communication leverages the public internet. It compensates for the failings of the internet – including variable bandwidth, service discontinuities and different levels of signal tracking and firewalls – by applying AI-based intelligent routing to eliminate all perturbations.
The software-defined architecture is fully meshed. That is, there are paths between every point of presence and every other. Signals can therefore be routed in multiple ways, and the denser the network, the more paths become available. The two-layer AI traffic engineering monitors the health of every link in the path every second for all key factors. If the performance of any link being used deteriorates for any reason, the AI algorithm will switch to the best alternate route in less than 20 milliseconds, maintaining reliable end-to-end transmission with zero error.
All of these routing decisions are based on the big data platform, where the network learns the best and most reliable paths and continually improves its performance. Laid over the intelligent routing is Caton’s CTP (Caton Transport Protocols), a suite of more than 40 algorithms, including advanced forward error correction to provide unprecedented throughput, continually adapting to maximise the available bandwidth.
The result is the ability to establish and maintain links from any location in the world to any other point, carrying broadcast-grade contribution or distribution streams at better than 99.9999% availability. China International Communications Co Ltd has been using Media XStream to carry four HD channels of CGTN, China’s largest media company, from Beijing to a major OTT platform based in Los Angeles, since October 2022 with zero errors.
“Broadcasters and professional media companies understand the huge advantages that the public internet has over satellites and leased lines, not least in cost and flexibility,” said Michael Yang, senior VP at Caton Technology. “However, they also know that the internet is unstable and unpredictable. What we have done with Caton Media XStream is that we have brought together the best of distributed cloud architecture and AI technology. The result is a cutting-edge solution that essentially eliminates these problems, creating an intelligent superhighway for the next-generation internet.”
Media XStream is designed to be simple to establish and automatic in operation, giving the user self-provisioning and needing no engineering support. Software APIs are available for systems vendors to integrate Media XStream into their technologies. Caton also provides readily available Caton hardware or the Caton Relay Server software application, which runs on COTS hardware, or fully managed services for the broadcast and media industry.
“Media XStream is already in commercial operation with multiple major media enterprises, giving them huge improvements in efficiency, a major transformation step on the path towards IP architectures, and boosting consumer experience through stable, high-quality video,” Yang said. “Our APIs and SDK are available now and we encourage other vendors to see how they can increase their own value by incorporating Media XStream into their offerings.”