At TelcoTV, Kasenna Inc. introduced RAMBase, the company’s first video server to incorporate Kasenna’s new patent-pending High Performance Streaming (HPS) technology, which was designed to lower cost per stream as well as operating costs for VOD providers, says Mark Crandon, senior product manager for the company, speaking from the trade show floor.
Based on Kasenna’s MediaBase XMP video server platform, RAMBase includes HPS software running on commercial-off-the shelf-hardware. RAMBase enables hybrid RAM/disk-based streaming clusters that combine the performance and reliability of RAM-based servers with the capacity of disk-based servers.
Crandon says unlike most other systems that stream video from a disk subsystem, HPS enables RAMBase to stream video from memory – a technique that’s used to increase throughput. HPS, which runs on Linux, allocates a certain amount of memory to the operating system and the rest to the streaming. This, he says, allows unprecedented saturation; 1000 streams through four gigabit Ethernet NICs. “If you were using a standard server, you couldn’t get that streaming throughput,” Crandon says.
“A few other vendors are doing this with proprietary hardware,” says Crandon. “We are using off-the-shelf hardware.”
This approach will enable Kasenna to offer a lower-cost solution. “Street price is $70 to $80 per stream,” says Crandon. “We are planning to be well under that.”
He adds, in addition to capex savings, RAMBase offers opex reductions by reducing – by a ratio of three/four to one – the number of servers a provider needs to manage because of the increased throughput and density of the video server. Where a 9 RU to 16 RU was required, now there is on 1 RU required, Crandon says.
In a press statement, Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat/MDR, says, "Kasenna's RAMBase video servers enable Pay-TV providers to offer the largest number of simultaneous video streams, at higher performance levels, at lower cost."
RAMBase servers with various storage capacities will ship in first quarter 2005.
