Virtual Awards Ceremony Done Right – Plan for Reliable Internet Connectivity

I think it's safe to say that at least some virtual award ceremonies are here to stay. After some being cancelled back in 2020 due to the pandemic, they came back in 2021 as full or partial virtual events:

• Golden Globe Awads
• Grammy Awards
• Academy Awards (Oscars)

And when this happens, the worst enemy for organizers of such virtual award ceremonies is the slow and unreliable Internet connectivity.

In today's next normal, when you’re hosting a virtual award ceremony, you need to plan for a lot of things. But fast and stable Internet is key among them. If the internet is slow or disconnects randomly, it will have a negative impact on your virtual event. Without solid Internet connectivity, it all goes to pieces. You need it as air on all fronts: hosts, prize winners and virtual attendees.

In this article we will go over the Internet connectivity aspect of running a successful virtual award ceremony.

Most virtual award ceremonies nowadays have one "central" place where the host is located. They may share that location with the jury and / or some of the nominees. If that's not possible, those will be engaged through live video streams over the Internet. If you watched the 2021 Golden Globes, you probably saw what I'm talking about.

But then there are some smaller scale award ceremonies / events where all participants - the host, the jury and the nominees - are remote, from their homes.

One thing is for sure - the general public, the attendees have to stream the video you're broadcasting in order to watch the show.

Try to visualize all these live video feeds being moved back and forth, encoded, transcoded, etc. Of course, you shouldn't worry about that - it's the job of dedicated streaming platforms and aggregators. Streamlabs, Telestream, Twitch, and YouTube are just a couple of examples.

What you should focus on is getting the best Internet connectivity for all the elements involved in your virtual awards ceremony: hosts, jury and nominees at the least.

If you provide fast and stable Internet across your virtual event infrastructure, you will at least have the peace of mind that your side of the virtual event is NOT responsible for any stuttering, buffering or disconnects on the attendees' part.

There are two rules of thumb here:

• get the best Internet available for the virtual event locations. Best = fastest, highest bandwidth for upload especially (!)
• use at least two Internet service providers at the same time. If one has issues or fails, you should failover to the other one(s).

Step 1 - Get the Internet plans

Keeping this in mind, the first thing you have to do is contact the local ISPs for each virtual location and ask about their business Internet plans. Those are generally better, and have associated guarantees and service level agreements.

Remember to get at least two Internet connections for each location.

Step 2 - Combine Internet connections for speed and stability

... using hardware link aggregation / bonding

To use multiple Internet connections at once, you can get dedicated bonding hardware, such as the devices from Peplink, LiveU or Mushroom Networks. These support plugging in multiple internet connections. Here’s what you need extra along with the hardware:

• pay to rent the equipment in each location of the virtual awards ceremony. That should set you back some thousands of dollars per location.
• get specialized engineers to manage and run that hardware. The companies that offer channel bonding services on rent generally send their own people and hardware for your event. Add some cost here too.

... using software link aggregation / bonding

If you think that's too complicated, there's always the alternative of using software channel bonding, right on each device that broadcasts live video on the Internet. You get an app you can install on a computer or a mobile device. That will enable the device to combine all available connections:

• Wi-Fi and cellular data on mobile devices
• Wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi, cellular and other types of connections  on computers. As long as you have a network adapter for each connection, you're good.

Software channel bonding services that are easier and cheaper to run. They are more efficient and don’t require a special setup. Speedify is one such channel bonding / link aggregation software option.

How to run a virtual award ceremony successfully? At the bare minimum, use software Internet bonding for the hosts, jury and nominees (speakers). And, of course, if those attending find themselves with slow, unreliable Internet, they can get it as well. And it's very simple to do it - there's no need to rent dedicated bonding equipment, sign contracts, etc.

Speedify provides channel bonding services at no extra costs – there is no hardware setup and you don’t need extra engineers for all the work. Moreover, it will automatically identify audio and video streams, and provide quality of service (QoS) by prioritizing streams over other traffic. Web browsing and software updates can’t mess up your calls and live streams.

As a fast bonding VPN, Speedify acts like a power-up for your device. Instead of only using a single Internet connection at a time, Speedify allows your device to use multiple connections simultaneously. You’ll get more bandwidth and more stable livestreams.

When paired with a dedicated speed server, it delivers the highest performance and additional features that should help you hold your virtual awards ceremony without any issues.

Get rid of all the connectivity hassles that come with running a successful virtual award ceremony. Use Speedify!