An enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) is a layer of software or hardware that distributes video inside a corporate network, so that a live stream crossing the WAN once can reach thousands of employees. Without one, every viewer opens a separate session back to the video platform: a CEO broadcasting to a 10,000-person company generates up to 10,000 individual streams across the corporate network.
How an eCDN Works
An eCDN sits between your video platform and your viewers, and does three things.
It reduces the number of streams crossing the network. Rather than every employee pulling an individual stream from the video platform, the eCDN delivers a small number of streams into each site and distributes locally from there. This is where the bandwidth saving comes from.
It applies policy to video traffic. eCDNs can prioritize specific streams over other traffic on the same links, encrypt streams in transit, and restrict access to viewers who are authorized to watch — which matters when the broadcast is a results announcement or a restructuring update.
It reports on what actually happened. Viewer counts, join and drop rates, bitrate and rebuffering by location. For an IT team, this is usually the difference between believing an event went well and knowing it did.
The Four eCDN Delivery Methods
Most eCDNs use one of four delivery methods, and the right one depends on your network more than on your video platform.
Multicast sends a single stream that network routers duplicate only where paths to viewers diverge. Bandwidth stays effectively flat regardless of audience size. It is the most efficient method, and it requires multicast to be enabled across routers, switches, and wireless controllers.
Peer-to-peer distributes video between viewing devices on the same subnet, so only a few copies cross the WAN. It needs no network changes, which makes it the fastest to deploy, but it consumes local device resources.
Caching stores a copy of the stream on a local appliance or server — typically at a branch office — so employees at that site pull from the local cache rather than from the video platform. It suits sites with predictable, repeat viewing.
Hybrid combines methods, falling back automatically when one is unavailable — for example, using multicast on the wired corporate network and peer-to-peer for viewers on Wi-Fi or VPN.
Large organizations rarely settle on one. A single town hall may reach headquarters over multicast, branch offices via cache, and remote workers peer-to-peer, all from the same broadcast.
Vbrick’s eCDN solutions cover multicast, peer-to-peer and caching from a single platform — see how the delivery methods compare, or talk to our team about which fits your network
How to Choose an eCDN
Four questions usually decide it:
Is multicast already enabled on your corporate network? If routing and switching are already configured for it, multicast is the most bandwidth-efficient option available and needs no new hardware. If not, enabling it is a network project.
How much of the audience is on Wi-Fi or VPN? Multicast behaves poorly over consumer VPNs and needs care on wireless. A high proportion of remote viewers pushes you toward peer-to-peer or hybrid.
How predictable are your events? Scheduled all-hands meetings and town halls suit caching and pre-event network simulation. Ad-hoc streaming suits methods that need no preparation.
What does your video platform already integrate with? Microsoft Teams town halls, for example, support eCDN providers through a defined integration, and the choice of eCDN is partly a question of which platforms you need to cover.
The measure that matters afterwards is not which method you chose but what happened to WAN utilization during the event, and how many viewers dropped or rebuffered.
eCDN FAQs