Level 3 Streaming DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket Games

DIRECTV, which announced last month that it would be streaming NFL games via their SUPERCAST product has apparently been using Level 3's new streaming content delivery network which Level 3 is slated to officially launch later this year. As some in the industry are now noticing, anyone with the NFL Sunday Ticket on DIRECTV that has access to the SUPERCAST product can trace back where the streams are coming from. While Level 3 would not "confirm nor deny" they are doing the delivery for DIRECTV, it's clear what network these streams are originating from. I don't know if this is an exclusive deal to Level 3 or not, but streams have been coming from Level 3 since the start of the season.

It will be interesting to hear who Level 3 has signed up as their first round of customers when they officially announce their new streaming CDN offering in the fourth quarter of this year and whether these customers are signed deals or those doing trials to see what Level 3 has to offer. First it was noticed that Metacafe videos are coming from Level 3 and now DIRECTV, so clearly Level 3 is already competing for some business in the CDN market.

Comments

[Steve]

I don't know about DIRECTV, but I just tested a few videos at Metacafe, and they appear to be coming from akvideos.metacafe.com which traces back to Akamai:

akvideos.metacafe.com is an alias for video.metacafe.com.edgesuite.net.
video.metacafe.com.edgesuite.net is an alias for a231.mm3.akamai.net.
a231.mm3.akamai.net has address 205.177.95.103
a231.mm3.akamai.net has address 205.177.95.77
a231.mm3.akamai.net has address 205.177.95.69
a231.mm3.akamai.net has address 205.177.95.94
a231.mm3.akamai.net has address 205.177.95.109

[guy]

Are you sure Directv isn't a transit customer of L3? synccast and bitgravity appear to be delivering the live streaming(synccast on .wmv, likely due to DRM concerns) and highlights(bitgravity).

[The Dude]

SyncCast is delivering the stream for the NFL games and Sling is doing the authentication.

DRM is applied in-house during the live encoding before it ever hits the CDN pipe using Digital Rapids' StreamZ encoders.