METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IP MULTICAST RELAY OF LIVE TV STREAMING TRAFFIC IN A TV-OVER-IP ENVIRONMENT

摘要

A system for live TV transmission over IP networks incorporates a head end real-time encoding/transcoding server for converting live TV encoded data streams with root multicast relay servers receiving multicast data streams from the encoding/transcoding server. The multicast stream output is provided to a first set of relay servers through multicast capable routers and the root multicast servers provide unicast stream output to a second set of relay servers through unicast limited routers. The first and second sets of relay servers provide unicast and multicast stream output for child servers or local access networks.