Orion decouples viewer count from origin load by combining a network-side transcaster with a lightweight player plugin, delivering up to 90% backbone traffic reduction for operators streaming live events.

NPAW (Nice People At Work S.L.), the global video intelligence company, today announces Orion, a MulticastABR delivery solution purpose-built for telecom operators and network owners that need to stream high-concurrency live events without the cost and quality penalties of pure unicast CDN architectures.

The Problem Orion Solves

In a traditional CDN-based live streaming setup, every concurrent viewer session pulls an independent copy of the same content from the origin or edge server. During peak events — a major football final, a national election, a flagship entertainment premiere — 100,000 simultaneous viewers generate 100,000 identical byte streams. Origin and CDN costs scale linearly with audience size, and network congestion degrades quality precisely when it matters most.

Orion breaks this multiplier. Whether 1 or 100,000 users watch, the origin serves one stream.

How Orion Works

Orion introduces two components into the existing delivery chain:

• Orion Transcaster — Deployed at the network edge (ISP headend or regional PoP), the transcaster receives a single ABR stream from the CDN or origin and converts it into a multicast feed distributed across the operator’s managed network. Viewer count no longer multiplies origin traffic.
• Orion Player Plugin — A lightweight client-side plugin integrated into standard ABR videoplayers (HLS/DASH). The plugin intercepts segment requests and checks a local multicast buffer first. If the segment is available, it is served instantly from the local cache over HTTP —zero CDN round-trips. If the segment is not yet buffered, the plugin falls back transparently to the standard CDN unicast path, ensuring uninterrupted playback.

The multicast transport layer uses a purpose-built protocol stack with four channels: SOC (socketmanagement), DATA (media segments), FEC (Forward Error Correction for packet loss recovery without retransmission), and CTRL (session control and signaling). FEC ensures broadcast-gradereliability over IP multicast without the latency penalty of TCP retransmissions.

Target Industry and Use Cases

Orion is designed exclusively for organizations that own or manage network infrastructure:

‣  Tier-1 and Tier-2 telecom operators delivering live OTT content over their managed networks(IPTV over IP, hybrid fiber-coax, FTTH). Operators deploying multicast ABR architectures have demonstrated 80–90% backbone traffic reductions in production environments.

‣  Cable and fixed-line ISPs looking to reduce peak-hour congestion during mass-audience live events without costly network capacity upgrades.

‣  Pay-TV operators transitioning from traditional broadcast to IP delivery who need broadcast-scale efficiency without abandoning ABR flexibility and multi-device reach.

‣  National public broadcasters with owned distribution infrastructure streaming election coverage, royal events, or other mass-audience live programming where infrastructure failure is not an option.

Key Differentiators

Part of NPAW’s Delivery Ecosystem

Orion integrates seamlessly with NPAW’s broader delivery portfolio. Operators already using NPAW CDN Balancer — our intelligent multi-CDN switching solution — benefit from unified orchestration: CDN Balancer optimizes the unicast fallback path while Orion handles the multicast primary path, ensuring maximum efficiency and quality across both delivery modes.

Combined with NPAW Suite Video Analytics, operators gain end-to-end visibility from origin to glass, covering both multicast and unicast traffic in a single monitoring layer.

Availability

Orion is available for operator trials and commercial deployment starting Q2 2026. NPAW is conducting live demonstrations at NAB Show 2026, Booth W3307, West Hall (April 19–22, Las Vegas Convention Center).