Cisco Cisco Internet Streamer Application Release Notes

3-Screen Session Shifting—For Windows Media Streaming and Movie Streamer using Web 
Services Infrastructure

For more information, see the “Product Overview” chapter in the Cisco Internet Streamer CDS Software 
Configuration Guide.

In Cisco Internet Streamer CDS Release 2.2, Flash Media Streaming uses Real Time Media 
Protocol (RTMP) to stream live content by means of dynamic proxy. Configuration of live or rebroadcast 
programs is not required. When the first client requests live streaming content, the stream is created. 
There are no limits to the number of live streams other than the system load. Live streaming uses 
distributed content routing to distribute streams across multiple Service Engines. 

Flash Media Streaming automatically retries a connection to the Content Origin server in cases when the 
upstream live splitting connection fails. This failover does not require any additional retry or clicks from 
the client side. Clients see a sub-second buffering and content continues to play after that. This feature 
does not address failover when the Service Engine’s connection to the client fails. The primary 
advantage of this enhancement is making intra-CDS infrastructure more resilient.

There are three new features involving the Service Router:

Service aware routing

Content-based (content-affinity) routing

Disk failure threshold

In service aware routing, the Service Router redirects the request to the Service Engine if the required 
protocol engine is enabled, is functioning properly, and has not exceeded its thresholds, and if the 
Service Engine has not exceeded its thresholds as configured. Service aware routing is always enabled 
and is not configurable.

In content-based (content-affinity) routing, the Service Router redirects the request based on the 
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). Requests for the same URI are redirected to the same Service 
Engine, provided the Service Engine’s thresholds are not exceeded. Content-based routing is best suited 
for cache, prefetched, and live program requests in order to maximize the hit ratio. The number of 
redundant copies of content is configurable for content-based routing. Redundancy is used to maximize 
the cache hit ratio.

When the number of failed CDS network file system (CDNFS) disks on a Service Engine exceeds the 
disk failure count threshold, no further requests are sent to the Service Engine. 

The 3-Screen Session Shifting feature unifies the user interactions with different content streaming 
engines and enables seamless movement of user sessions to and from different client devices (PC, Mac, 
Mobile, and TV). With this feature, users can pause a streaming session on one device and resume it on 
a different device. This feature provides the intelligence for client detection and format selection. The 
3-Screen Session Shifting interacts with the TV CDS as well.