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I intend to send a live video stream to multiple users. Currently, I'm using a webrtc gateway(server-side) to relay an incoming stream to multiple recipients, which incurs one stream per recipient, leading to high outgoing bandwidth.

Is there a method by which the relaying can be done by the network to take the burden off the server?

(My setup is something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28645913/1100528. Webrtc isn't a necessity but I wanted to avoid Flash.)

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galactocalypse
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    Multicasting video is the keyword, although it never gained enough momentum to get adopted by regular ISPs. I'll leave this as a comment because the last time I saw a multicasting video stream was in the late 90ies in the German research network DFN. – Alexander Janssen Jun 14 '15 at 11:27
  • From all the skeptical answers on the internet, I understand there's no feasible multicasting option at the moment. Just to confirm I'm getting this right - multicasting consumes constant bandwidth on the server regardless of the number of requests, right? – galactocalypse Jun 14 '15 at 12:59
  • Yes, a client subscribes to a multicasting group via a protocol, IGMP or PIM. Your local switch forwards this to your next multicasting outer, which will ask his connected routers if they know the route to the service, simply speaking. It works like a routing protocol. The server will only send one copy of each packet to the router, and the router knows on which paths subscribers are listening. Ideally a tree will converge so that only routers on the paths to the clients will get the packets and only forward it on the paths leading to clients. The switches will care for final distribution. – Alexander Janssen Jun 14 '15 at 13:07

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You would probably be best looking into a third party library, something like OpenTok or Peer5.

They provide the ability to manage large multicast streams using a hybrid (p2p/server) network solution, that spreads the workload between peers, minimizing the reliance on a single server.

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  • You simply cannot multicast across the Internet unless it is through a tunnel. The Internet would collapse under the weight of DM multicast, and SM multicast requires RPs, but would bear the expense of purchasing, and maintaining them. – Ron Maupin Feb 17 '16 at 00:05