Advection.NET operates a dozen streaming distribution hubs at core international network access points so your content is available at the same Internet peering points used by the viewer’s ISP. This means less buffering or wait time for your users.

Don’t be fooled when you compare streaming hosting networks. Some providers may only have one or two hubs, but they’ll show you a pretty map of the backbone they buy bandwidth from to make it look like they have international distribution when they don’t.

We do, including both Europe and Asia.

North America Online Video Distribution

At each location, we subscribe to Tier 1 bandwidth connected directly to multi-gigabit core peering routers, instead of going through layers of second or third tier ISPs and switches. Being directly on the Internet’s backbone bypasses equipment causing congestion that can degrade streaming quality or make downloads take longer. Being geographically closer means less delay when users start or skip around in a stream.

When we talk about our bandwidth capacity, we’re not referring to our upstream providers’ bandwidth. In these network diagrams, we have one or more 1000mpbs uplinks at each colored hub, with more than enough servers and storage to fully use that bandwidth even with video-on-demand (“VOD”) content. The servers shown on these diagrams show the types of servers we maintain at each POP. Each server shown here actually represents many redundant servers performing that function.

Because our main hubs are in “carrier neutral” facilities, we can immediately add capacity to other backbones with a phone call. And for Victoria’s Secret or Live8 sized events, we can even balance the traffic for you across several of the .

International Online Video Distribution

Every router between you and your viewers is a potential point of congestion or latency that can make your streams less enjoyable for your site’s users. An approach that solves this problem for web pages is to locate “edge servers” at Internet Service Providers all over the country. In theory, each ISP’s users can pull content from a server that’s already right next to them. This works well for web sites, which don’t need much drive space. It doesn’t work so well for streaming, where copying 15 megabyte video files to 5,000 servers would be simply too cost prohibitive in both storage and bandwidth.

For streaming, a better model is the “distributed hub” approach: several key data centers each with many Tier 1 backbone peers. These data centers are like hubs of a wagon wheel, each able to deliver content in a single hop to dozens of backbone carriers, each of whom serve hundreds of smaller ISPs and regional data centers in another hop or two. By choosing the right dozen hubs, you’ll reach your viewers without congestion between you and their network.

Based on six years of streaming hundreds of millions of streams a month, we’ve learned which Internet locations will allow streaming servers to reach the greatest number of users with the least latency. Other factors contributing to performance are the backbone carrier’s routing and peering policies, their willingness to provide detailed bandwidth reporting of their own connections, not just yours, and the topology of their switches and routers in their data centers.

Tier 1 Internet Exchange Points

Our streaming media distribution hubs are located at the best peered facilities in New York, NY; San Jose, CA; Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Dallas, TX; Paris, France; and Frankfurt, Germany. We have additional web hosting hubs in New York, NY; San Jose, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and Phoenix, AZ.

By collocating with Advection.NET, you’ll get a single point of contact and a single contract covering streaming, downloads, and web servers located on major backbone carriers such as (in alphabetical order) Above.NET, AGL, AT&T, Global Crossing, Level(3), Limelight, MCI, MTI, PSI.net, Qwest, Time Warner Telecom, and UUNet. Our network of distributed hubs gives you geographic redundancy, simplified management, and of course, scalable performance.

Speaking of geography—in addition to our network maps of the United States and Europe shown on this page, you can also zoom in on our video hosting datacenters from satellite.