25 START-UP ALLEY Mainstreaming
BOSSING THE STREAMS Mainstreaming aims to take glitchy streaming in hand and make it a thing of the past
This new breed of nimble yet scalable Video Delivery Network addresses the growth of cloud gaming and online streaming services that Mainstreaming’s broadcast and gaming clients are now starting to offer. Initial clients included a handful of broadcasters across Europe and the US (including the NFL’s channel and the Denver Broncos) as well as religious broadcasters who are able to use Mainstreaming’s network to stream their content globally. Most of the company’s focus is currently on Europe, where there is less competition and more demand. The start-up’s first tier one broadcaster deal in this territory came late last year in the form of a partnership with Sky Italia. The broadcaster is using Mainstreaming’s network to support the migration of its content delivery from satellite to OTT. Initially this focussed on the global delivery of streaming content in Italy across telco, live streaming and on demand for the broadcaster’s Sky Go, Sky Q and Now TV platforms. The partnership has since expanded to support Sky’s new superfast broadband offering, Sky via fibre, using Mainstreaming’s private network to facilitate the streaming of 4K content into subscriber’s homes. Mainstreaming is also able to support cloud-based gaming – another emerging market for broadcasters, online services and console developers as they look for low latency solutions to deliver real-time Netflix-style gaming services. While not a direct customer, Sony round, which together with two other VCs resulted in a further $6m funding, bringing its total raised to over $10m. Corrado adds that investment will be used in part to support the 25-strong company’s expansion into cloud-based gaming delivery. The start-up also offers video hosting, professional consulting on video distribution, and the branding of their company’s HTML5-and-Flash- compatible video player. (through its Innovation Fund) is one of the companies supporting Mainstreaming’s second funding
MAINSTREAMING
COUNTRY: ITALY STARTED: 2015
The meltdown of a live video stream at an event in New York inspired former IBM employee-turned-tech entrepreneur Antonio Corrado to try to figure out why CDNs delivering video are still plagued with latency and quality issues. He concluded that, as audiences demand more live streamed content, traditional platforms are hindered by old architecture that increases latency and degrades video quality. The crux of the matter, Corrado says, is in the way that traditional CDNs work by copying the content near to their final users, which relies on having as many point of presence (POPs) as possible. This caching method not only incurs large overhead costs but exerts pressure on user devices. Together with CTO Giovanni Proscia and COO Philippe Tripodi, Corrado founded Mainstreaming to develop a proprietary video delivery network, HyperNode, which takes advantage of advances in broadband technology and AI to deliver video more efficiently and in ultra low latency. “Our tech is not based on caching, we have developed a new way to distribute video globally that guarantees a notable reduction in energy consumption and the use of fewer servers,” Corrado claims. It’s a ″one-hop network focused on direct connections with carriers, utilising over 2700 ISPs worldwide.” Content is requested from an origin server only once, so that no acquirer is needed, and ideally no issues with congestion.
WE HAVE DEVELOPED A NEWWAY TO DISTRIBUTE VIDEO GLOBALLY THAT GUARANTEES A NOTABLE REDUCTION INENERGY CONSUMPTION AND THE USE OF FEWER SERVERS AI is used to determine when part of the network may have an issue, and then reroute content so the user doesn’t experience a ′hiccup′ with their stream. “We have AI in the application to monitor the quality of user experience – if we understand in a specific area there are 200 people having issues we compare constantly and change the routing,” Corrado explains. He adds that while Mainstreaming uses standard routers, the innovation is in the application. “We can decide to change the path to avoid congestion and find the right path to reach users in a short time,” he says.
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