IRL Live Streaming Gear – Essential Equipment
IRL live streaming is hot and trending. Just check out Twitch and see for yourself. In its most simple setup, all that you need is a smartphone and the streaming app. However, that might not offer the best quality for your viewers.
When you’re live streaming in real life from different locations, having a reliable Internet connection to serve you is a must. Even if you’re streaming IRL on Twitch and you only use your smartphone, you still need that.
Remember those choppy videos, buffering screens or even disconnects when you’re live streaming? It’s time to get an essential piece for your IRL streaming equipment. This will help you always stay online while live streaming with a stable Internet connection. It’s not heavy and it’s not even a physical thing like a special router or streaming box.
Should you have a backup 4G, 5G, Starlink, or cable internet connection?
Yes — every internet connection goes down, including Starlink, which drops for ~34 minutes a day on average. A backup connection from a different provider means one outage never takes you fully offline. The most common options are a 4G/5G cellular hotspot, a cable or DSL line, or a second satellite dish.
4G/5G cellular
Works anywhere. Just a SIM or hotspot — no installation needed.
Learn more →Cable / DSL
Best for fixed locations. Different network, so outages rarely overlap.
Learn more →Second Starlink
Adds redundancy and throughput for remote sites or heavy usage.
Learn more →Speedify bonds any two connections into one — automatic failover, more speed, no dropped calls.
Try Speedify free →IRL Streaming Issues – Why They Happen
Experiencing unreliable Internet at some point is something we’ve all been through. But it’s most annoying when you’re streaming live to your followers.
The most common situations where you might encounter these type of connectivity issues live streams include:
- When traveling / on the go – on the street, bus, train. You may be connected to a bad / spotty WiFi hotspot.
- In crowded areas – the available bandwidth for both WiFi and cellular data connections may not be sufficient to serve everyone on a stadium, at a concert or at a frat house party.
- At home – if your ISP is doing maintenance work right when you’re broadcasting live streams. Or if they’re throttling your connection.
Here’s what happens: if the connection is unreliable, you may not be live streaming at a high resolution due to limited available bandwidth, so your videos may appear jittery or choppy. Plus – if your Internet connection is spotty and disconnects for some reason – you will lose many of your viewers at least for that specific stream.
So – your IRL streaming equipment urgently needs an upgrade to be able to handle unfriendly Internet conditions while streaming live.
IRL Streaming Equipment Checklist
As mentioned before, you don’t need much to live stream online. You can go with something as simple as a smartphone and the Twitch app. Or you can go for a more professional setup, which would include:
- a video camera – look at something that can output streaming video at least 720p / 60 fps. You can definitely go with your smartphone camera or with the GoPro live streaming functionality.
- a computer or mobile device that you would use for live streaming. For IRL purposes, we recommend a mobile device – smartphone or tablet. You can also use a dedicated streaming device like the LiveU Solo.
- two or more cellular modems – to get a fast and reliable Internet connection. These should be connected either directly to the streaming device, if it supports multiple USB network adapters, or you can use a Raspberry Pi as a bonding router.
- battery packs – their capacity should be of at least 20,000 mAh. Also check the rated power – should be max. 100 Wh, to avoid issues when traveling by plane.
- a backpack or something to carry all this equipment in an organized way.
Essential IRL Streaming Equipment: Speedify Channel Bonding App!
Speedify is part of the perfect IRL streaming equipment. It’s a powerful software app that gets you faster, more reliable and secure Internet. Speedify allows you to use multiple Internet connections at the same time. Speedify runs on computers, smartphones, tablets and various devices that run Linux, including Raspberry Pi. Depending on the device, you can combine any mix of two or more WiFi networks, cellular networks and wired networks. By doing that, you’re not only solving the reliability aspect of live streaming through the automatic Internet failover mechanism, but also the bandwidth and latency issues.
In order to combine 2 or more Internet connections at once, Speedify uses channel bonding technology. It’s the only standalone software service that does that.
Speedify Fast Bonding VPN vs Other Channel Bonding Services: Which is Best for Your IRL Streaming Equipment?
Channel bonding technology is key to a fast and reliable Internet connection when live streaming. It is not restricted to a single implementation architecture. You can choose a mixed hardware-software solution from companies like Peplink and Mushroom Networks. Or just go with the software-only implementation by Speedify, which you can also deploy on a hardware device of your choice running Linux.
Many people choose broadband bonding solutions that include dedicated bonding hardware pieces, such as bonding routers or multi-wan (SD-WAN) networking devices. If you’re planning to adopt a hybrid hardware-software solution, here are some things you should consider.
- Performance – You will be limited by the performance of your bonding hardware and sometimes even by the software. You may have smartphones or computers that can go faster, but it won’t make any difference.
- Flexibility – Will this solution still be usable if you change something in your current setup?
- Scalability – Hardware gets old quickly. Does the solution include free upgrades for hardware?
- Cost of implementation – Hardware adds a cost to the final solution.
On the other hand, if you choose a software-only bonding VPN solution like Speedify, the benefits are straightforward. The only limitations you’ll have are related to:
- the devices you’re using and what type of network connections they support.
- the speeds of the Internet connections you’re planning to combine.
There are no flexibility or scalability issues. When it comes to cost, Speedify is only a fraction the price of mixed hardware-software solutions!
Continuous and Secure Connectivity for Your IRL Stream – Speedify Bonding VPN App
Speedify doesn’t just get you a fast and reliable Internet connection when live streaming in real life. Speedify also protects you from compromised WiFi networks and snooping hackers. It uses advanced encryption to make sure your private data stays under your control.
Before Speedify, users often had to choose between security and speed. As Speedify was designed with speed as one of its primary goals, you no longer have to sacrifice speed for security. You can have both.
Forget about low quality video streaming, buffering or even disconnects when IRL live streaming! Get started with Speedify today!
Alex and the Speedify team are always exploring the latest in networking and security technology—like 5G, 6G, WiFi 7, laser and satellite internet—and sharing it in new discussion content across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn every week.
Got a tech question? Let's go deeper! Pop into Speedify Office Hours live every Wednesday at 10 AM Eastern. Speedify CEO Alex Gizis and our network engineers are standing by to break down your questions about networks, tech updates, and Speedify features.
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