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From protocols to global delivery

A systems course built around low-latency live streaming. PPCDN's implementation is used to explain engineering trade-offs, but every episode prioritizes transferable principles, measurement boundaries and verification methods.

20 episodes 6 modules protocols → architecture → practice → cost Current baseline: P2P ≈ 70ms

How to study

New to audio/video? Read in order. Already know WebRTC/CDN? You can start at Module 2 or 3. The single-point figures need their test conditions and should not be extrapolated into a network-wide SLA.

Episode 1 is now on YouTube:

EP01 · The interactive-video dilemma (YouTube)

Episode 2 is now on YouTube:

EP02 · The self-hosted CDN answer (YouTube)

Episode 3 is now on YouTube:

EP03 · Content sovereignty: control it yourself, the ultimate moat (YouTube)

Episode 4 is now on YouTube:

EP04 · Transport showdown: RTMP / SRT / WHIP (YouTube)

Why self-host

Build the problem space first: why interactive live streaming is hard, and what "self-hosting" really buys you in terms of control.

  1. EP01 · The interactive-video dilemma
  2. EP02 · The self-hosted CDN answer: PPCDN architecture overview
  3. EP03 · Content sovereignty: control it yourself, the ultimate moat

Transport & encoding basics

How media enters the system, how it recovers on weak networks, and why multi-layer encoding underpins ABR.

  1. EP04 · Transport showdown: RTMP / SRT / WHIP
  2. EP05 · How Simulcast works and what it's for
  3. EP06 · Publish/play security: signing, tokens and anti-hotlinking

Weak networks, quality & observability

From "it looks choppy" to measurable latency, tail behavior, quality and switching strategy.

  1. EP07 · How to strengthen resilience on weak networks
  2. EP08 · Video instrumentation: measuring real end-to-end latency
  3. EP09 · Latency stability matters more than average latency
  4. EP10 · How to quantify video quality
  5. EP11 · What Netflix's seamless switching teaches us
  6. EP12 · Benchmarking low-latency live streaming and the current baseline

Advanced architecture

Into distributed systems: P2P, resource isolation, capacity, horizontal scaling and burst traffic.

  1. EP13 · P2P direct connect: faster than CDN for the last mile
  2. EP14 · Node-pool management: putting resource boundaries in the scheduler
  3. EP15 · The relationship between horizontal scaling and low latency
  4. EP16 · Handling sudden bursts of high concurrency

Practice & verification

Bring the system up, then close the loop with recording and layered testing instead of stopping at the architecture diagram.

  1. EP17 · Deploy from scratch: run your own CDN in 15 minutes
  2. EP18 · Recording & playback: adding VOD to live streaming
  3. EP19 · Load-testing methodology: from a single box to global load

Cost review

Finally, turn the technical capability back into a cost model and mark what is measured, what is modeled, and what is still unverified.

  1. EP20 · Is a 30% bandwidth saving realistic? A real-data review

Start with EP01 Developer docs