The ROI Cost of Enterprise Multicast Over Unicast Video Delivery

If your organization hosts regular all-hands meetings, CEO town halls, or live training sessions, you’ve likely encountered a familiar problem: delivering high-quality video to thousands of employees without crashing your network or your budget. Most teams solve this by leaning on external CDNs or enterprise video platforms. It works, but at a cost: every viewer opens a new connection, every connection consumes bandwidth, and your company pays for every gigabyte delivered.

There’s a better way. If you already have a multicast-capable infrastructure, it’s time to take a serious look at reviving multicast as the core of your internal video strategy.

Unicast vs. Multicast: What’s the Real Cost?

Let’s break it down with a typical internal event scenario:

Use Case: 1,000 employees watching a 1-hour live stream

Video Bitrate: 6 Mbps

Unicast Bandwidth Total: ~2.7 TB for one event

Multicast Bandwidth Total: 6 Mbps across the network (regardless of viewer count)

Now let’s translate that into cost. With most enterprise-grade CDN solutions, like those bundled with platforms such as Kaltura, Brightcove, or Vimeo Enterprise, you’re typically looking at:

• Annual contracts in the $50K–$100K+ range

• Additional per-GB or per-minute streaming charges

• Recurring SaaS platform fees that scale with usage and features

In contrast, a multicast-based deployment using MDI’s Multicast Agent can be rolled out with:

• An annual software license (with a support plan)

• Existing network infrastructure (assuming Layer-3 multicast support)

• Minimal ongoing costs (e.g., a Wowza server license)

• No per-viewer or bandwidth fees

The result? Reliable internal video delivery is offered at a fraction of the cost of using an external CDN solution for your internal audience.

Illustration: ROI Hero

Bandwidth Breakdown: Multicast vs Unicast at Scale

The numbers tell the story better than any pitch. Here's what it looks like to deliver a 1-hour, 6 Mbps live stream to 1,000 internal viewers:

Delivery Method	Ingest Bandwidth	Internal Network Usage	External Bandwidth Usage
Unicast (CDN)	6 Mbps (encoder to CDN)	0 (CDN manages delivery)	6 Gbps (1000 x 6 Mbps back into the network)
Multicast (MDI)	6 Mbps (encoder to Wowza)	6 Mbps total (one stream shared via LAN)	0 (fully internal)

Over a 1-hour session, this translates to 2.7 TB of external traffic with unicast. With multicast, you move just 2.7 GB (internally).

For large organizations, this not only saves money but also avoids straining VPNs, firewalls, and WAN links or paying for extra capacity.

What’s Involved in a Multicast Deployment?

Deploying multicast isn’t complicated, but it does require a coordinated one-time setup:

1. Network Configuration

   • Layer-3 routing, IGMP snooping, and multicast group settings

   • Typically takes one week for two IT engineers to tune and validate

2. Media Server Setup

   • Use Wowza Streaming Engine or a compatible alternative

   • Multicast Agent listens to the MPEG-TS stream and rebroadcasts as HLS in the browser

3. Viewer Enablement

   • Push the Multicast Agent installer to 1,000+ endpoints via your endpoint management tool

   • All viewers tune in via their browser—no new video platform required

Once this is in place, you can broadcast to 100 or 100,000 viewers with no increase in delivery cost or bandwidth usage.

Why Enterprises Pay More Than They Need To

The major players in enterprise video delivery position their services as “turnkey,” but that convenience often hides:

• Steep annual fees bundled with rarely-used features

• Vendor lock-in with limited customization

• Dependency on external networks, even for internal communications

Meanwhile, many IT teams already have the necessary infrastructure in place to support multicast; they just haven’t been provided with the tools to activate it.

MDI Multicast Agent changes that.

Pros and Cons: Multicast vs. Unicast for Internal Events

Feature	Multicast	Unicast (via CDN)
Bandwidth Usage	Constant (one stream for all)	Scales with viewer count
Cost Structure	One-time setup + minimal ops	Recurring, variable, high
Scalability	Unlimited on LAN	Limited by network & budget
Latency	Low	Moderate
External Dependence	None (in-network only)	Relies on external CDNs
Setup Complexity	Moderate (once)	None, but recurring spend

Who Should Consider Multicast?

Multicast isn’t for everyone, but if your organization fits the following profile, it may be the smartest infrastructure investment you make this year:

• 1,000+ employees on a corporate LAN or WAN

• Layer-3 routers and switches that already support multicast

• Recurring internal video events (monthly or more)

• A desire to own, not rent, your streaming solution

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The Bottom Line

Enterprises are already spending hundreds of thousands per year to stream content to their own employees, often using external bandwidth for events that never leave the building. Yes, you can multicast Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings...

With a multicast-enabled network and a lightweight software agent on each endpoint, you can eliminate those recurring costs and gain complete control of your video delivery.

MDI’s Multicast Agent delivers this outcome at a fraction of the cost of traditional platforms, no bloated licensing, no bandwidth bills, no lock-in.

Want to see the math for your organization? Book a demo with one of our engineers and get a personalized deployment and ROI analysis.