Live Event Streaming: Reliable Infrastructure for Concerts and Conferences

Build reliable live event streaming infrastructure with automatic failover, multi-destination output, and temporary deployment.

The Live Event Challenge

Live events are unforgiving. A concert, a conference keynote, a sports match, a product launch: these happen once. There is no second take. The internet connection at the venue may be unreliable. The production team may be setting up infrastructure that morning and tearing it down that evening. And every minute of downtime is visible to every viewer.

Event streaming infrastructure must be reliable (it cannot fail during the event), flexible (requirements change right up to showtime), and deployable (it needs to work in venues you have never been to before, on networks you do not control).

Internet Connectivity at Venues

The single biggest variable in live event streaming is the network. A conference center’s Wi-Fi is not the same as a dedicated fiber line. A music festival in a field has no wired infrastructure at all.

The Problem

  • Venue internet is often shared, congested, and unpredictable
  • Wi-Fi introduces jitter and packet loss
  • Cellular networks saturate when thousands of attendees connect simultaneously
  • Wired connections may not exist at the specific location within the venue where you need them

The Solution: SRT and SRTLA

SRT was designed for exactly these conditions. Its configurable latency buffer and ARQ error correction handle packet loss gracefully. For the worst network conditions, SRTLA bonding aggregates multiple connections (two cellular SIMs, a Wi-Fi hotspot, a wired backup) into a single reliable stream.

A practical event connectivity setup:

BELABOX / Mobile Encoder
  --> 4G SIM 1 (Carrier A)  --|
  --> 4G SIM 2 (Carrier B)  --|-- SRTLA bonded --> Vajra Cast (cloud)
  --> Venue Wi-Fi            --|
  --> USB Ethernet (if available) --|

If any single connection fails, the others carry the load. With three or four connections bonded, you can sustain reliable HD streaming even in challenging RF environments.

Failover Architecture for Events

For a live event, failover is not optional. It is the foundation of your streaming architecture.

Input Failover

Configure your Vajra Cast route with multiple redundant inputs:

Route: "Main Stage"

Primary:   SRT from main encoder (venue floor)
Backup 1:  SRT from backup encoder (venue floor, different network)
Backup 2:  SRTLA from mobile encoder (cellular bonded)
Backup 3:  HTTP/TS pull from cloud relay (if pre-staged)

Vajra Cast monitors all inputs simultaneously and switches in under 50ms when the active input degrades. The switchover criteria are configurable:

  • Packet loss threshold: switch when loss exceeds a percentage
  • Bitrate floor: switch when bitrate drops below a minimum
  • Connection timeout: switch when the source disconnects entirely

When the primary recovers, Vajra Cast switches back automatically (with a configurable hold-off timer to prevent flapping between unstable sources).

For a complete guide to failover configuration, see our video failover best practices article.

Output Redundancy

On the output side, send your stream to multiple destinations:

Vajra Cast --> SRT to primary CDN origin
           --> SRT to backup CDN origin
           --> RTMP to YouTube Live (backup)
           --> HLS local recording (archival)

If your primary CDN has an issue, the backup CDN has the same stream. If both CDNs fail, the YouTube stream acts as a last resort. And the local recording ensures you always have an archive.

Multi-Destination Distribution

Live events often need to reach multiple platforms simultaneously:

  • Corporate conference: company website, partner portals, internal network
  • Concert: ticketing platform, social media, broadcast partner
  • Sports event: OTT platform, regional broadcasters, social media clips

With Vajra Cast’s zero-copy distribution, adding destinations costs zero CPU. One input can feed 50+ outputs with the same overhead as feeding one. This makes it economically practical to add speculative destinations (a social media channel that “might want the stream”) without worrying about resource impact.

Adding Destinations During the Event

This is where hot management becomes critical. During a live event:

  • A sponsor asks for their own stream feed 10 minutes before showtime
  • A social media platform is added mid-event
  • A partner CDN needs to be swapped because of latency issues
  • A test output needs to be removed to clean up the dashboard

All of these changes happen live, with zero interruption to existing outputs. No restarts, no config reloads, no held breath.

Temporary Infrastructure Deployment

Events are temporary. Your streaming infrastructure needs to deploy fast and tear down clean.

Docker Deployment

Vajra Cast runs in Docker, making event deployment reproducible:

docker run -d \
  --name vajracast \
  -p 9000-9010:9000-9010/udp \
  -p 1935:1935 \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  vajracast/vajracast:latest

Bring the same configuration to every venue. Use Docker Compose or Kubernetes manifests for complex setups with multiple instances.

Cloud + Venue Hybrid

A common event architecture combines a venue-side encoder with a cloud-side gateway:

Venue:
  Cameras --> Encoder --> SRT (encrypted) --> Internet

Cloud:
  Vajra Cast (cloud instance)
    --> Receives SRT from venue
    --> Distributes to CDN, platforms, partners
    --> Provides failover between venue feeds
    --> Runs monitoring dashboard accessible from anywhere

This architecture moves the routing complexity to the cloud, where you have reliable connectivity and compute. The venue side only needs an encoder and an internet connection. SRT handles the rest.

Pre-Event Testing

Before the event, validate your entire chain:

  1. Send test streams from the venue encoder to the cloud Vajra Cast
  2. Verify all outputs are receiving correctly
  3. Test failover by deliberately killing the primary input
  4. Check latency end-to-end from encoder to viewer
  5. Monitor SRT statistics to understand the venue’s network characteristics
  6. Run VMAF analysis to verify video quality through the chain

Vajra Cast’s dashboard makes all of this visible in real-time from any browser.

Event Day Operations

Before the Event

  • Verify all input connections are live and stable
  • Check all output destinations are connected
  • Confirm failover is armed (backup inputs ready)
  • Set up Grafana alerts for critical conditions
  • Brief the operations team on the dashboard and manual override procedures

During the Event

  • Monitor the dashboard for any input quality degradation
  • Watch for failover events (they should be automatic, but awareness matters)
  • Be ready to hot-add or hot-remove outputs as requirements change
  • Track viewer counts on HLS outputs

After the Event

  • Review failover event logs (did any switches happen? why?)
  • Check quality metrics (VMAF scores throughout the event)
  • Export statistics for the post-event report
  • Stop routes and tear down infrastructure

Scaling for Large Events

For large events with multiple stages or multiple concurrent sessions:

Multi-Stage Configuration

Stage A --> Route "Stage A" --> CDN / Platforms
Stage B --> Route "Stage B" --> CDN / Platforms
Stage C --> Route "Stage C" --> CDN / Platforms

Each stage gets its own route in Vajra Cast with independent failover, monitoring, and output destinations.

High-Availability Deployment

For mission-critical events, deploy two Vajra Cast instances in different availability zones:

Encoder --> SRT --> Vajra Cast (Primary, Region A) --> CDN
       --> SRT --> Vajra Cast (Backup, Region B)  --> CDN

CDN origin failover switches between the two Vajra Cast instances if one goes down. This provides infrastructure-level redundancy beyond the stream-level failover within each instance.

Next Steps

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