Use case · Streaming & media
Video streaming
Video streaming is bandwidth-heavy above all, needing the network capacity to deliver video to many viewers, plus transcoding to prepare video in multiple formats and bitrates, storage for large files, and delivery that often pairs origin infrastructure with a CDN. Dedicated, well-connected infrastructure handles the origin and transcoding; EU hosting keeps content and viewer data sovereign.
Key points
- Video streaming is bandwidth-heavy above all — bandwidth is the defining constraint.
- Transcoding prepares video in multiple formats and bitrates for adaptive streaming.
- Video files are large, so storage capacity and throughput matter.
- Delivery to many viewers often pairs origin infrastructure with a CDN.
- EU hosting keeps content and viewer data under European sovereignty.
What does video streaming need?
Video streaming delivers video over the internet to viewers, and it is demanding in specific ways: it is bandwidth-heavy above all, it needs transcoding to prepare video for streaming, it needs storage for large video files, and it needs delivery that reaches many viewers well. Video is large, and streaming it to many viewers consumes a great deal of network bandwidth, which is the defining constraint; the video must be prepared, through transcoding, into the formats and qualities streaming uses; the files must be stored; and the video must be delivered to viewers, often through a combination of origin infrastructure and a content delivery network. These needs shape what video streaming infrastructure must provide.
The scale of the bandwidth and delivery makes video streaming a distinctive workload, where the network is often the dominant concern. Serving video to many viewers, each receiving a continuous stream, adds up to large bandwidth demands, so the network capacity and delivery are central, alongside the transcoding and storage. This page looks at video streaming broadly; specific cases such as live streaming, video on demand, and transcoding are covered on their own pages, while what follows attends to the common needs — bandwidth, transcoding, storage, and delivery — that video streaming shares.
Bandwidth: the defining constraint
Bandwidth is the defining constraint of video streaming, because video consumes far more bandwidth than most content, and streaming it to many viewers multiplies that into very large demands. Each viewer receiving a video stream consumes bandwidth continuously, at a rate depending on the video's quality, and many viewers at once multiply this, so a popular stream or a large audience adds up to substantial bandwidth. The network capacity to deliver all this video is therefore the primary requirement, and often the main cost and constraint, of video streaming — the infrastructure must be able to push the volume of video data the viewers consume.
Providing for this means well-connected infrastructure with the bandwidth video streaming's volume demands. The infrastructure serving the video needs good network connectivity and sufficient bandwidth to deliver the streams to viewers without the network becoming the bottleneck, and delivery is often spread across a content delivery network to handle the volume and reach viewers efficiently, as a later section describes. We provide well-connected infrastructure with the bandwidth video streaming needs, so that the origin serving the video has the network capacity to deliver it, which is central to video streaming given that bandwidth is its defining constraint and largest demand.
Transcoding: preparing video for streaming
Video streaming needs transcoding — converting video into multiple formats, resolutions, and bitrates — so that it can be streamed adaptively to viewers on different devices and connections. Streaming commonly uses adaptive bitrate techniques, where the video is prepared in several quality levels and the viewer's player switches among them based on their connection, so a viewer on a fast connection gets high quality and one on a slow connection gets lower quality without buffering. Preparing the video into these several versions, and into the formats streaming uses, is transcoding, and it is a necessary step in getting video ready to stream.
Transcoding is computationally demanding, done on CPUs or, often, accelerated by GPUs, which are well suited to the parallel work of video processing. Converting video into multiple versions takes significant compute, especially for high resolutions or many streams, so transcoding infrastructure needs adequate compute — CPU, and often GPU acceleration for efficiency. For streaming that transcodes a lot of video, this compute is a real part of the infrastructure. We provide the compute video transcoding needs, including GPU acceleration where it helps, so that video can be prepared into the formats and quality levels adaptive streaming uses — a necessary step that video streaming depends on, covered further on the transcoding page.
Storage for video
Video files are large, so video streaming needs storage with the capacity for the video and the throughput to serve it, particularly for on-demand streaming where a library of video is held. A video library, especially with each video stored in multiple qualities from transcoding, amounts to substantial storage, so capacity is a real requirement; and the storage must serve the video fast enough to stream it, so throughput matters too. For on-demand video, the stored library must be held and served; for live streaming, storage needs differ, but recording or time-shifting still involves storage.
Providing storage for video means capacity for the library and its multiple qualities, with the throughput to serve streams from it. The storage holds the video, including the several versions transcoding produces, and serves them to be streamed, so it needs both space and speed. Fast storage feeding a content delivery network, which then handles much of the delivery to viewers, is a common arrangement. We provide storage sized for the video a streaming service holds — capacity for the library and its qualities, with the throughput to serve it — so that the video is stored and can be served for streaming, whether directly or as the origin a delivery network draws from.
Delivery: serving viewers and the CDN
Delivering video to many viewers, often spread geographically, commonly pairs origin infrastructure with a content delivery network, so that the video reaches viewers efficiently without overwhelming the origin. The origin holds the video and serves it, but delivering every stream from the origin to every viewer would demand enormous bandwidth from it and be slow for distant viewers; a content delivery network caches the video across many locations and serves it to viewers from nearby, offloading most of the delivery from the origin and reaching viewers quickly wherever they are. This origin-and-CDN arrangement is the common way video streaming is delivered at scale.
In this arrangement, the origin infrastructure still matters, as the source the delivery network draws from and serves what it does not cache, so it must be well-connected and capable. The origin must serve the delivery network reliably and handle what reaches it, while the delivery network handles the bulk of viewer delivery. We provide well-connected origin infrastructure for video streaming — the source that holds and serves the video, working with a content delivery network that distributes it to viewers — so that the origin is capable and well-connected, and the delivery to viewers is handled by the origin-and-CDN combination that video streaming at scale relies on. The CDN itself is a complementary service working in front of the origin we host.
Scalability: many concurrent viewers
Video streaming must handle many concurrent viewers, sometimes surging for popular content, so it must scale — chiefly in bandwidth and delivery, which the viewer load stresses most. As more viewers watch at once, the bandwidth and delivery demands rise proportionally, so scaling video streaming means being able to deliver to a growing audience, which the content delivery network largely handles by distributing the load across its locations, backed by a capable origin. Popular content or events can bring sudden surges of viewers, which the delivery must absorb.
Supporting scale means the origin and delivery being able to handle the viewer load and its peaks. The delivery network scales the viewer delivery across its locations; the origin must be well-connected and capable enough to serve the delivery network and handle its share under load; and provisioning for peaks prepares for surges. We provide origin infrastructure sized and connected to handle the load a streaming service places on it, working with a delivery network that scales viewer delivery, so that video streaming can serve many concurrent viewers and absorb surges — with the origin capable and well-connected, and the delivery scaled across the network, which together handle the audience video streaming reaches.
Sovereignty, and where VV Internet Hosting fits
Video streaming involves content — which may be valuable or licensed — and viewer data, including the personal data of European viewers, so where the streaming infrastructure runs governs these, making sovereignty a consideration. VV Internet Hosting is incorporated in the Netherlands, within the EU, so video streaming infrastructure hosted with us runs under European jurisdiction and outside the direct reach of the US CLOUD Act, keeping the content and viewer data under European law. For streaming services handling European viewers' data, or content that should stay sovereign, keeping the infrastructure in the EU addresses it.
We host well-connected, dedicated infrastructure for video streaming: the bandwidth video's volume demands, compute including GPU acceleration for transcoding, storage for the video library, and capable origin infrastructure to work with a content delivery network — in EU datacenters under European jurisdiction. This suits streaming services that want capable, well-connected, sovereign origin and transcoding infrastructure they control. We are clear about our limits: we provide the origin and transcoding infrastructure, while a content delivery network for global viewer delivery is a distinct, complementary service that works in front of the origin we host; and we are not a managed streaming platform. We are the dedicated, sovereign infrastructure for a streaming service's origin and transcoding — and if that fits your needs, we can host it well.
Related use cases
Questions
Video streaming, answered plainly
Common questions about hosting for Video streaming.
What's the biggest constraint in video streaming?
Bandwidth. Video consumes far more bandwidth than most content, and streaming it to many viewers — each receiving a continuous stream — multiplies into very large demands. The network capacity to deliver all that video is the primary requirement, and often the main cost and constraint. Delivery is usually spread across a content delivery network to handle the volume.
What is transcoding, and why is it needed?
Converting video into multiple formats, resolutions, and bitrates, so it can be streamed adaptively — the viewer's player switches quality based on their connection, giving high quality on fast connections and lower quality without buffering on slow ones. It's computationally demanding, done on CPUs or often GPU-accelerated, and it's a necessary step in preparing video to stream.
Do you provide the CDN for video delivery?
We provide the well-connected origin and transcoding infrastructure — the source that holds, prepares, and serves the video. A content delivery network for global viewer delivery is a distinct, complementary service that works in front of the origin we host, caching video across locations to reach viewers efficiently. We host the capable origin the CDN draws from, in the EU for sovereignty.
Planning Video streaming infrastructure?
We host dedicated, EU-sovereign infrastructure sized to your workload — and we will tell you plainly when something else fits better. Tell us what you're building.