Could Multicast ABR Really Have Saved the Paul/Tyson Fight?
When Netflix streamed the Paul/Tyson fight to a record-breaking 65 million simultaneous viewers, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Many viewers were left frustrated by buffering, freezes, and audio-sync issues. Like many other vendors, Broadpeak, a major player in streaming technology, claimed its multicast ABR (mABR) technology would have “knocked out video freezes” during the broadcast.
It’s a tantalizing promise, but could mABR realistically have delivered it? To understand, let’s look at what mABR is, what’s required to make it work, and why its widespread adoption is more complicated than Broadpeak might have you believe.
What Is Multicast ABR?
Multicast ABR combines the efficiency of multicast streaming with the flexibility of adaptive bitrate (ABR) technology. Instead of sending individual unicast streams to every viewer, multicast ABR allows one stream to be sent to many viewers simultaneously within an ISP’s network.
According to the Streaming Video Alliance, this hybrid approach can significantly reduce bandwidth demands during large-scale events while maintaining the flexibility of delivering content at multiple quality levels to accommodate varying network conditions. It’s an elegant solution—but only if the right infrastructure is in place.
What’s Required to Make mABR Work?
Multicast ABR isn’t a magic bullet; it relies on a complex chain of technologies and support at multiple ecosystem levels. Here’s what’s needed (the figure is from another Broadpeak article):
- Unicast to multicast transcaster: Converts ABR streams into multicast for delivery across the network.
- Multicast to unicast agent: Converts multicast streams to unicast for playback on ABR-compatible devices. The client can be implemented in home gateways, set-top boxes, or broadcaster apps.
- Multicast Controller: Orchestrates delivery by managing URL mappings and notifying clients about available multicast streams.
Figure 1. Multicast ABR operation. From here.
Platform Support
- ISP Infrastructure: ISPs need multicast-enabled networks (routers, switches) and software to support unicast-to-multicast conversion at their headends. Without this, the ISP must revert to unicast delivery, and the benefits of mABR are lost.
- Device Readiness: Devices like home gateways, set-top boxes, or even broadcaster apps must be able to host the agent that will enable multicast-to-unicast conversion.
Note that there is no need for the CDN to support multicast. The content provider's Origin feeds in standard http/ABR to a transcaster located in the ISP network, so the multicast starts there. All communications of both agent and transcaster with a CDNs are plain http 1.1.
The Streaming Video Alliance acknowledges these requirements represent a significant challenge to some ISPs, particularly those with older equipment or limited incentives to invest in multicast upgrades. However, the challenge is much lower for ISPs that have already deployed an IPTV service for live content, since the multicast infrastructure is already available in this case. In addition, mABR is not an on/off technology: the installed base of home gateways can be upgraded step by step, incrementally increasing the beneficial impact of mABR on the network.
Standards and Industry Support for Multicast ABR
For the record, the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium has developed the DVB-MABR (Multicast Adaptive Bitrate) standard to address the growing need for scalable and efficient live streaming. Broadpeak is not the only company offering this technology; others include ENENSYS Technologies, Velocix, and CommScope.
The Realities Holding mABR Back
The Streaming Video Alliance document paints a less rosy picture of mABR adoption than the Broadpeak documents, highlighting several key hurdles:
- Legacy Infrastructure: Many ISPs still rely on legacy equipment that lacks CPU power or memory to handle mABR streams. Upgrading this equipment across an entire network is costly and time-consuming.
- Fragmentation: ISPs are not universally equipped to support multicast. Even if one ISP implements mABR, others serving the same event might not, forcing the CDN to revert to unicast for large portions of the audience. That said, if part of the traffic has been re-routed to multicast delivery, it decreases the load on central unicast servers, enabling better services to unicast clients.
- The Chicken-and-Egg Problem: Operators are hesitant to invest in mABR until there’s clear demand from broadcasters and CDNs. Meanwhile, broadcasters won’t fully embrace mABR until ISPs adopt it more broadly.
I asked Broadpeak about this last issue. Their response was “What we see happening is that ISPs invest in mABR for their own use first, to optimize the delivery of their own live service, switching from MPEG-2 TS based IPTV to pure ABR format. Then they think about opening this technology up to content providers.”
DAZN Implementation
This is not to say that mABR can't work effectively for live events. On its website, Broadpeak presents a compelling case study with DAZN, a global live sports streaming platform. DAZN has been using Broadpeak’s nanoCDN multicast ABR solution to deliver high-quality live sports content, including 4K streams, across Europe. The technology enables DAZN to collaborate with major ISPs to implement mABR on their networks, resulting in significant bandwidth savings and an improved quality of experience for viewers.
According to DAZN’s Chief Technology Officer, Sandeep Tiku, mABR has allowed participating ISPs to reduce network traffic by up to 90% in some areas, and minimize buffering, making live streaming more sustainable and scalable. DAZN has also extended mABR support to devices such as telco set-top boxes, Android TV, Tizen, and WebOS connected TVs, further enhancing accessibility. While the technology requires ISP collaboration, DAZN’s successful implementation demonstrates that mABR can deliver on its promises in managed environments.
Broadpeak is also collaborating with BT for mABR distribution in an initiative called MAUD that you can read about here.
Could It Have Helped the Paul/Tyson Fight?
Let’s circle back to Broadpeak’s claim. Could mABR have saved the day for Netflix and its viewers?
- Who It Would Have Helped: Viewers watching via an ISP with full mABR support. Here, the bandwidth strain would be drastically reduced, and video freezes caused by network congestion would likely have been eliminated.
- Who It Wouldn’t Have Helped: Viewers watching on an ISP without mABR support. On these systems, the fight would have been delivered as unicast, with all the associated challenges of high traffic and overloaded networks.
- How Much Would It Have Helped? Realistically, mABR would have provided a partial solution. Even if 50% of ISPs supported mABR, the other half would still suffer from the same issues, leaving many viewers frustrated. The localized nature of mABR means it’s only as effective as the ISP network on which it’s deployed.
The bottom line is that, unlike WebRTC for example, a single service provider can't implement a complete end-to-end solution. There's no company that can snap its fingers and offer worldwide mABR support; it must be implemented on a ISP-by-ISP basis.
Broadpeak’s Claim in Context
Broadpeak’s assertion that mABR could have "knocked out" video freezes during the Paul/Tyson fight is ambitious—but perhaps too ambitious. The promise of multicast ABR is undeniable, but the practical realities of deployment make it unlikely to fully solve the problem in today’s fragmented ecosystem.
Final Thought
Could mABR be the future of live streaming? Absolutely. But for now, it’s more of a heavyweight contender waiting for its title shot than the undisputed champion Broadpeak makes it out to be. The Paul/Tyson fight might have been a win for boxing, but for streaming technology, it was a reminder of how far we still have to go.
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