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Splitting, or distributing a broadcast to other servers, can be done in two ways: pull splitting or push splitting. In our tests of RealNetworks' streaming platform offering, we looked at both methods.

Pull splitting occurs on demand, with no persistent connection between the source server and the splitting server. With pull splitting, any broadcast stream is available to all splitting servers. With push splitting, in contrast, a persistent connection is established between the source and the splitting servers, and only content explicitly pushed in this fashion is available to the splitting server.

RealNetworks' Administration Guide showed us how to easily configure both types of splitting in our test network. One slight irritation is the double URL format required for links to splitting sources. The source we generated for our splitter testing was a simulated live stream that we created using the command-line g2slta.exe utility. This is similar to the PlayListBroadcaster.exe utility in QuickTime, and as with QuickTime, we had to copy all the files involved into the same directory to avoid path problems.

RealNetworks is set to release RealSystem 8 Proxy Server, which, for some enterprises, may be a useful alternative to push or pull splitting. This product was nearly out of beta when we were doing our testing, and a new version of the server, RealSystem Server 8, was also just completing beta and should be available when you read this. The new server offers some enhancements that reduce bandwidth overhead when configuring splitting, and it enables more effective and dynamic deployments of RealNetwork streams across all the RealSystem Servers in an enterprise.