Deployment Architecture

Zixi-protected multicast deployments includes the following Zixi Components:

• Origin – the origin of the stream can be either a Zixi Feeder, a file playing locally, or any device streaming remotely or locally in any of the following formats:
  • Zixi protected transport (PULL/PUSH)
  • MPEG-TS over UDP and/or RTP with SMPTE-2022 (Unicast/Multicast)
  • File - Transport stream files from local file system
  • RTMP pull from CDNs and/or other sources
  • RTMP push
  • RTMPS
  • RTSP input
  • HLS
  • TS over HTTP
  • RIST
• Contribution/distribution – in the contribution/distribution segment there is a Zixi Broadcaster component that streams a Zixi protected transport stream to a multicast-supported network.
• Consumption – in the consumption segment there are a variety of devices that can receive and playback a multicast Zixi-protected stream, including:
  • Mobile device running a Zixi player.
  • Mobile device running a customer application with Zixi Proxy embedded.
  • PC running VLC with Zixi embedded.
  • PC/Server running Zixi Receiver
    
    

The endpoints/receivers connect to the Zixi Broadcaster to pull an input stream. The Zixi Broadcaster redirects them to a multicast address. If the multicast connection does not succeed and the input stream has NOT been marked as “multicast only”, the entire transmission of the stream will fall back to Unicast. However, enabling the multicast only flag will prevent the fallback to unicast.

If the multicast connection is successful, but there are errors in the transmission, the error correction will be transmitted in UDP unicast directly to the specific device that suffered the error.