March 2024 Summaries

In the digital age, network performance metrics such as bandwidth and latency significantly impact streaming experiences. Bandwidth refers to the maximum capacity of an internet connection to transfer data, while latency pertains to the delay in data transmission over a network. Both factors are crucial for real-time communication applications like video conferencing. Low bandwidth can cause quality issues such as lag, whereas high latency can result in freezing and audio/video mismatch. Although both metrics are important, latency is generally more critical because it directly affects the fluency of real-time communication. Developers can provide better RTC quality by optimizing these network performance metrics simultaneously through appropriate platform selection and configuration settings.

The internet's best-effort system prioritizes reliability over speed, which is a challenge for real-time video and audio streaming. While content delivery networks (CDNs) address routing challenges for static content like webpages or on-demand videos, they don't work well for real-time communication due to the inability to store live content in advance. Agora's Software Defined-Real Time Network™ (SD-RTN™) is designed specifically for real-time interaction by dynamically selecting the most efficient routes for transmitting streams of video and audio frames with minimal delay (low latency). This network ensures a high-quality experience for users, even under poor local network conditions. Agora's SD-RTN provides specialized functionalities for real-time communication that go beyond the capabilities of standard CDN services.