RTMP/Flash features for ProxySG

Products

• ProxySG Software - SGOS

Issue/Introduction

 What version of Proxy OS support RTMP/Flash proxy and what are the requirements for this feature?

 

Resolution

SGOS 6.x introduces streaming proxy support for the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP/Flash) family of protocols.  RTMP Proxy supports acceleration, monitoring, and control of Adobe Flash Streaming Media based traffic.

The RTMP Proxy provides bandwidth usage optimization for live streaming traffic by splitting live streams to multiple clients.  When a live stream is split, the ProxySG fetches the streaming content with just a single connection to the OCS and serves it from the appliance to all requesting workstations.

Other supported features include the ability to monitor/control Flash streaming traffic handled by the ProxySG appliance and CDN inter-operability.  If you have several ProxySG appliances, you can also define hosts and groups of hosts to which client requests can be redirected to create proxy chains.  Those hosts can be servers or proxies.  You must define policy rules to redirect requests.

An explanation on how to implement this is documented in the SGOS6.x Administrative Guide which includes supported RTMP/Flash protocol and method of client connection, software requirement on the client and configuration on ProxySG to process RTMP/Flash Streaming.

This feature is an addition to the existing Streaming Proxies, including Windows Media, Real Media and QuickTime.  Flash Streaming Proxy control can be found in Management Console under Configuration > Proxy Settings > Streaming Proxies > Flash.

In order to utilize RTMP/Flash streaming proxy functionality, a Flash Streaming License is required.  The license status can be validated in the Management Console under Maintenance > Licensing > View > Licensed Components.

Flash Streaming License can be purchased via the sales channel and it is bound to hardware model and user limited is equivalent to the CW supported by the model.

If you have an expired/invalid “Flash Streaming” license, RTMP/Flash streaming could still work but the “splitting” feature will not function, and the streaming will be treated as a normal HTTP object cache.

RTMPS can be tunneled using either a TCP listener for transparent mode, or detect_protocol(none) in an explicit proxy.

Note: in some circumstances where the streaming content is hosted on multiple servers with destination host resolved via DNS round-robin, without valid Flash Stream License, ProxySG would proxy the streaming requests as normal HTTP requests, where connections to destination hosts could change upon DNS round-robin and cause playback to fail in the middle of streaming (see 000016310 for details).