The physics problem that no amount of infrastructure can solve
It Wasn’t Your WiFi
Remember the last time a major live stream failed you? Maybe it was the Super Bowl. Maybe Game of Thrones. Maybe a boxing match you paid $79.99 to watch. The stream froze. The quality dropped. Or it just didn’t load at all.
You probably blamed your internet connection. Maybe you restarted your router. Yelled at your ISP.
It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your ISP. It was the fundamental architecture of how streaming works.
A Brief History of Streaming Failures
| Event | Year | Platform | What Happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game of Thrones Finale | 2019 | HBO Max | Service crashed, millions couldn’t watch |
| Disney+ Launch | 2019 | Disney+ | Hours of outages on day one |
| Jake Paul vs Tyson | 2024 | Netflix | 65M viewers, widespread issues |
| AWS re:Invent | 2020 | Amazon | Amazon’s own stream crashed on AWS |
That last one bears repeating: Amazon couldn’t reliably stream their own conference using their own servers. If the company that invented cloud computing can’t solve this problem, what makes anyone think more servers will help?
The Architecture of Failure
When you press play on a live stream, your device requests a stream from a server. The CDN finds the nearest edge server. A dedicated stream is created just for you. Every single viewer gets their own personal stream.
The Math Problem
For a major event with 10 million concurrent viewers at 8 Mbps each:
Total bandwidth required: 80 Tbps (terabits per second)
For context, the entire internet backbone capacity is ~500-1000 Tbps. A single major event can consume 8-16% of global internet capacity.
Where It Breaks
- Origin Bottleneck: The source server can only push so much data
- CDN Capacity: Edge servers have finite capacity; popular events overwhelm specific regions
- Network Congestion: Everyone is pulling from the same pipes
- The Thundering Herd: Millions hit “play” simultaneously; requests overwhelm infrastructure
Why Money Can’t Fix This
Netflix spends $1.3 billion annually on AWS infrastructure. They’ve built their own CDN (Open Connect). They have the best engineers in streaming.
And they still had issues during the Jake Paul vs. Tyson fight with 65 million concurrent viewers.
Why? Because you can’t buy your way out of O(n) scaling:
Cost = Viewers × Per-Viewer-Cost
Double the viewers = Double the cost = Double the infrastructure. There’s no economy of scale that makes this better.
The Broadcast Paradox
Broadcast television solved this problem 70 years ago:
- One signal goes to the transmitter
- The transmitter broadcasts to the coverage area
- Unlimited receivers pick up the signal
- Zero additional cost per viewer
Whether 10 people or 10 million people tune into the Super Bowl over-the-air, the broadcaster sends exactly the same signal.
The Multicast Solution
Instead of sending 65 million separate streams, imagine:
- One stream leaves the origin
- Network routers replicate at branch points
- Local distribution handles the last mile
- All 65 million viewers receive the same data
The bandwidth math changes completely:
Unicast (65M viewers): 520 Tbps
Multicast (65M viewers): ~10-50 Gbps total
Reduction: 99.99%
The Technology Exists
At Viewcast, we’ve built SmartCast to solve exactly this problem:
- Works with standard devices: No special hardware or apps
- Compatible with existing infrastructure: ISPs don’t need to change anything
- Seamless viewer experience: Just press play
- True multicast efficiency: One stream, unlimited viewers
DanceTV runs on SmartCast today. No buffering. No quality drops. No infrastructure panic during popular moments.
The Choice Facing the Industry
Streaming can continue down the current path: keep adding servers, keep negotiating CDN contracts, keep hoping events don’t get “too popular,” keep issuing refunds and apologies.
Or it can embrace the architecture that actually works: multicast delivery, fixed infrastructure regardless of viewership, reliable delivery at any scale.
The Super Bowl will stream again next year. The question is: will viewers actually be able to watch it?