Hey everyone!
This is John with the Elite Encoder Livepeer Node. I’d like to introduce our operation to the community and potential delegators. We’ve just launched https://eliteencoder.net to provide live transcoding statistics and information about our node.
Elite Encoder is operated by a Fiber Technician and Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience building reliable systems. We’ve been running on the network since late 2021 and have learned a lot about how to operate a successful Livepeer node.
We operate two nodes which geographically fail-over traffic during maintenance windows:
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Charlotte, North Carolina (Primary)
2x NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti
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Columbus, Ohio
1x NVIDIA GTX 1050
We operate L2 Arbitrum RPC nodes on both hosts with automatic fail-over to support node restarts.
Currently our cuts are:
- Reward Cut 5%
- Fee Cut 70%
We will evaluate cuts over time as the network economics change, it is our goal to provide high value for the Livepeer network and our delegators while generating enough revenue to keep operations profitable.
If you’d like to stake with our node you can find us on the the Livepeer Explorer at Livepeer Explorer
We will be publishing announcements to our delegators via Twitter https://twitter.com/EliteEncoder
You can also reach out to us in Discord or use the contact form on our website.
I’m always looking for opportunities to contribute to Livepeer because it is a project I fully believe in and want to see succeed in the marketplace. I have an extensive background in software development with a strong interest in video broadcasting. One of my goals with Livepeer is to start a broadcaster node and video streaming site. Feel free to reach out if you need any help with developing a project that uses Livepeer!
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We have moved all traffic to our data center near Charlotte, North Carolina with gigabit fiber to the box and UPS power backups on all network and node infrastructure. The Columbus, Ohio site has been retired since it’s geographic location wasn’t particularly beneficial. We are researching options for building a node in the European region.
On July 1st we built a 2nd node on-site which is dedicated to running Geth and Arbitrum to provide a solid blockchain connection and to improve performance of the primary node. Previously all three services were operating on one box.
During the week of July 4th we completed an OS upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
New System Specs:
Primary Livepeer Node
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
- 64 GB RAM DDR4
- 2x NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti
- 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0
- 2TB Corsair MP600 - 7000 MB/s read
Geth/Arbitrum RPC Node
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
- 64 GB RAM DDR4
- 2x NVIDIA GTX 1050
- 2x 2TB Samsung 980 Pro - 7000 MB/s read
The RPC Node is used for transcoding when the Primary Livepeer Node is undergoing maintenance. Traffic is manually moved when streams are low, usually during our 5-7am eastern US maintenance window. Keeping traffic behind a single IP address has improved uptime across node restarts.
Both nodes are configured for Geth, Arbitrum and Livepeer, however we avoid running all services on one box at the same time for system reliability. We use a proxyd configuration on each service to manually failover Arbitrum or Geth ahead of system maintenance without affecting streams. We are pruning Geth on a monthly basis.
We’ve configured a Rinkeby Testnet on the RPC Node for testing new Livepeer configurations.
Grafana reporting service has been moved to the website and alerts created for low stream count, committed system memory and GPU/disk temperature which will instantly notify our team of any urgent issues via telegram.
You can follow the Elite Encoder Twitter page or check out our website eliteencoder.net to keep track of node operations.
Build pictures will be posted here soon!
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I have several updates on what we have been working on at Elite Encoder! Plus build pics 
Since the last update:
- Completed the Titan Node Grant program on July 31st.
- Obtained additional delegation from investors (THANK YOU!)
- We appreciate you trusting us to deliver quality and growth for the network as a part of this amazing community of builders.
- Secured our node by eliminating keys from the production boxes.
- Acquired two NVIDIA GTX 1070 SC2 graphics cards (with ICX cooling).
- Configured remote transcoding to enable scalability.
- We are now operating 4 GPUs across two boxes on-site with a conservative stream limit of 7 per GPU.
- Centralized prometheus reporting data so report queries don’t run on the nodes.
- Acquired a block of static IP addresses for use in our “little data center”. Added network packet monitoring.
- Installed GrayLog for Livepeer log monitoring.
- This has helped in so many ways beyond the metrics offered by Livepeer. More on this later.
Our near-term goals are:
-
Focus on quality and uptime: We had some “growing pains” over the month of July and have just recently been able to resolve by adding additional capacity. We get a lot of volume for a single node and will continue expanding our infrastructure and monitoring tools. The addition of two 1070 GPUs and log monitoring has alleviated this problem.
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Expand the Elite Encoder network to the Eastern Europe and/or South Asian markets.
- Explore options to launch a private transcoding pool.
- Alternatively explore cost efficiencies of co-locating servers.
- A new fiber line going in during September. The existing one isn’t underground and had to be spliced for the extra machine. A managed switch will be installed to help us scale more nodes, though we are pretty close to an optimal network already.
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Contribute to Livepeer Development: Back in June I was introduced to the Go programming language while compiling Livepeer to run on NETINT cards. I have some new ideas for these cards (excluding cost constraints) that may be valuable to the network. NETINT has also promised some firmware improvements and we have yet to run these on Linux.
Finally, here are our long-promised build pictures and the new mascot for Elite Encoder:
Keep building strong! You can always find me on Discord if you have any questions or need help with a project or Orchestrator setup 
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That’s a sweet cat, you can tell he runs the place 
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Hey Delegators!
We like to provide timely communication regarding any changes to our staking program.
Since we have finished the Titan Node Grant program at the end of July, we have continued to focus on quality and believe now is a good time to update our cuts to a more sustainable schedule.
On Monday August, 22nd we will be updating our reward cut to 10%
Our fee cut will remain at 70%
Thank you for your continued support!
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Happy New Year to the Livepeer Community!
We’ve made some improvements to our node over Q4 '22. Here’s some updates on what we’ve been focused on:
- Upgraded our two GPUs from NVIDIA GTX 1070s to 1080s
- Improved network routing with a fiber-based QNAP switch
- Added network latency monitoring via SmokePing
- Established a dedicated on-prem development server within our network
- Contributed to the pricePerBroadcaster functionality in Q3 '22.
- Actively seeking transcoding partners in the European, Western US and South American regions. If you’re new to Livepeer and interested in applying, reach out to us on Discord, Telegram or the contact form on our website. We offer a value-for-value compensation model.
We’ve been contributing to the Livepeer GitHub since August, currently working on our 4th pull request to the Livepeer repository! Livepeer is positioned for significant adoption and growth in 2023. Our current development focus is on improving the broadcaster experience through making it easier for developers to utilize and connect to the Livepeer network. We have a few projects in the works, exploring options to integrate Livepeer into popular developer tools like NodeJS and Wordpress.
In late Q4 we collaborated with core developers to build support for NETINT transcoding hardware on the latest 3.x firmware. Using our on-prem development server and the PPB feature, we completed real-world streaming tests with two T408 units. However, the video output was incomplete and CPU scaling optimizations are still needed. Though we are still excited about the improved video quality and energy-efficiency promised by NETINT hardware, we are currently prioritizing development efforts aimed at network reliability, broadcaster experience and adoption.
We remain committed to providing value for our delegators. Our fee and reward cuts remain the same with no plans to change anytime soon.
Keep building strong and cheers to 2023! 
