Reverse proxy for streaming live video

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 01:38:05PM -0400, fedel wrote:

> I am having trouble streaming HTTP tunneled video through nginx reverse
> proxy. My frontend server is running nginx 0.7.67 and a backend server
> sources a live video feed (RTSP wrapped in HTTP, mime
> application/x-rtsp-tunneled).

[...]

> The quicktime user agent sends a POST request for the stream URL with
> content-length set to 32767. This request only comes with 280 or so
> bytes of body data. I guess the UA claims a huge content-length just to
> keep the pipe open. Now, nginx waits on the client connection for the
> remaining 32500 bytes, i.e. it does not forward the first 280 bytes to
> the backend streaming server which would have responded and triggered
> more data from the client but since the client won't receive a response
> to its first 280 bytes of "in-band" request the quicktime user agent
> times out and shuts down the connection. End of stream...
> 
> Is it possible to "magically" configure nginx to transparently forward
> request data and response data immediately when they arrive?

No, it's not possible.  Requests with content-length set to 
something bigger than actual amount of data has no chances to pass 
though nginx.

Maxim Dounin