The Building Blocks of Live Streaming Infrastructure

Live streaming has evolved from simply broadcasting video to a more interactive and complex experience, integrating various technological components beyond just video transmission. Modern live streaming now includes features such as real-time shopping interactions, bidirectional communication, and business logic synchronization, all of which demand a sophisticated infrastructure with considerations for latency, scale, and interactivity. This infrastructure is composed of three planes: the media plane for video delivery, the control plane for managing connections and permissions, and the data plane for real-time events like chat and reactions. The architectural design of a streaming service must account for different latency requirements depending on the use case, such as passive viewing versus interactive or transactional live streams. Technologies like HLS and WebRTC are employed differently based on their tradeoffs between latency and scalability. Most systems must balance between these technologies to meet varying needs, often ending up with a hybrid model. Managed services like Stream's live streaming SDK help simplify the complexity by providing the necessary tools and APIs to build scalable, low-latency, interactive live streaming experiences.