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London calling in real time

Online content delivery provider iStream has moved into a data center in London — desks, editing suites and all.

18 November 2011 by Penny Jones - DatacenterDynamics

     
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In a dark room in London, in a data center situated in a part of town steeped in history and full of progressive energy, there is a team of broadcasters working behind the scenes on some of the most celebrated sporting and news events in Europe.

 

They are not alone. They have some colleagues in Las Vegas doing exactly the same thing. And around the world, this trend is likely to continue, as you can’t get much lower latency for real-time streaming of content thanfrom working inside the data center.

 
Added resilience, redundancy, cheaper power through economies of scale and most of all lower latency are key to iStreamPlanet’s operation. It provides coverage in real-time online, and these ingredients have provided the digital media company with capabilities that have won it contracts with some of the biggest sporting events in the world — from live coverage of tennis to football events.
 
From studio to data center
iStreamPlanet is a perfect example of how the reliance on data is changing the landscape we live in, as technologists and as consumers.

Formed in late 2000, when online video had just begun to take over the Internet, iStreamPlanet has an evolution of its own.Ex-basketball player Mio Babic, troubled by knee injuries, set up a business broadcasting weddings online from a chapel in Las Vegas for friends and family who could not be present for the nuptials (or possibly so those taking their nuptials could not forget!).
 
Throughout the years iStreamPlanet grew and found new ways to effectively stream online content. In April 2003 it became the first company in the world to deliver secured pay-per-view broadcasting over the Internet using Windows Media. Now this innovative approach is taking its operations into the datacenter, quite literally.
 
SuperNAP in Vegas housed iStream’s first data center. It laid the foundation for its London setup. Interxion was chosen for its ability to first of all house the business requirements of iStream — it has a suite, complete with its own offices, broadcasting studio and data center. Its central London location and the connectivity that is so integral to theoperations of iStream sealed the deal.
 
iStreamPlanet Vice President and general manager for Europe Khurram Siddiqui highlights just how important the move into a data center in London has been for the company.
 
“Last year we streamed the entire Wimbledon fortnight for tennis fans in America. We didn’t have the operations center in the UK, so we had video encoders onsite at the Wimbledon Club, encoding video and pushing encoded content to our Las Vegas facility, where it was integrated with our US-based video workflow,” Siddiqui says.
 
“Because of the long backhaul we were limited to only certain quality levels and the number of video feeds we could push across the Atlantic.
 
“This year we did a live broadcast from here (inside Interxion’s Brick Lane data center), which reduced the latency by 55% and allowed us to select as many video feeds as our customer wanted, and at any quality level, with a 20% reduction in costs.”
 
It is a compelling selling point for iStream. Interxion also uses low latency as one of its selling points — most of its customers at Brick Lane are involved in high-frequency trading. iStreamPlanet connects direct to Level 3’s backbone at the data center, where it is one of the prime carriers. It also has immediate access to 24 other carriers, Tier 1 ISPs and leading CDNs. This strategic placement can drastically reduce the time to architect andimplement new projects.
 
“By having access to the leading carriers and cross-connectivity with the leading CDNs, we can publish content without ever having to push our customers’ content over the public internet. We avoid all security and quality of service issues that digital media service providers typically face,” Siddiqui says.
 
Interxion also helped iStream set up a very large satellite dish array on the roof of the Brick Lane data center — two 3.7m dishes and two smaller antennas for acquiring high-definition content across the European and Middle East regions. “We would have had trouble getting permits for such large dishes elsewhere, given the central London location,” Siddiqui says.
 
Working in a data center
It all sounds great, but there is a side to this that could give a data center operator the chills. SuperNAP implemented an innovative cooling system — T-SCIF — in its facility, which monitors temperatures in every rack cabinet and isolates air in the hot and cold aisles, sucking away hot air, recycling it and returning the chilled air to where it is needed on demand. 
 
“This meant we did not have to work in a data center environment wearing hoodies and ear protection to overcome the effects of 65-mile-per-hour chilled air,” Siddiqui says.
 
The solution was designed by APC by Schneider Electric. Called HAC, or Hot Aisle Containment, it was implemented in Brick Lane for iStreamPlanet as a first.
 
In total, iStream has taken a 500 sq ft private suite, in which it has a thermally and acoustically isolated data center, broadcast control room, production suite and offices. It provides a quiet, comfortable environment for iStream’s staff, according to Siddiqui. The control room is sound proof. It has dark walls and furnishings to mitigate light and features a video wall, with three large flat screens showing 32 depictions of various stages of signal acquisition from satellite and fiber signals and relays and conversions.
 
A meeting room is also set up for clients, along with a separate secure entry for the suite — something that is equally important as the latency for iStream. 
 
“We are working with the world’s most prestigious content distributors, and they are allowing us to access their premium content. If we were not completely secure, that video could end up in the wrong hands. “We utilize access control, mantraps, 24-hour on-premise security, CCTV, as well as environmental alarms, to ensure our systems and clients’ content remains safe. This makes clients feel more at ease,” Siddiqui says.
 
Reliability is also key. Being in a carrier-grade data center means iStream can guarantee redundancy to all services, and it can also scale up or down, as its business requires.
 
It is perfect timing to target London as a media hub. The 2012 Olympic Games are just around the corner and the need for real-time media relay from London will be great. Just finding somewhere to rent without a data center attached during the month of the games is proving a big enough challenge as it is.  

 

 

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