Re: [cobalt-users] Real Server Basic on RaQ4r

[Lumir G Janku <lgjanku@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>         I can't argue with installing Real's server but the free
> server is only good for a year. After that I suspect the only option
> is to buy one.

Yes, the license is for a year, but one can always get another one 
afterwards, unless there is enough justification to buy the upgrade

>         I'm just trying to point out the fact that you can stream
> content via your httpd. It works very well for the vast majority of
> what most of our users stream. It will probably handle most of what
> your users stream too. Even Real's support pages contain an obvious
> hint to that fact.

True. That of course depends on what you (or your client) want to do. If 
you have a site which purpose is to present a library of sound clips, then 
RS has advantages in balancing the bandwidth load (and scaling to the value 
provided in Connection control), in contrast to httpd, beside the smoother 
transfer. But for a lot of situations, the httpd streaming would do just fine.

> 25 cable bit rate
> streams at one time is, at least by my standards, serious streaming
> (do the math)... If that's what you need and you're asking on this
> list you're probably in big trouble, or soon will be ..

Yea, a good point, it is necessary to do the match.

Consider the following scenario. Say that you have assigned to you 1.55 
Mb/Sec by your provider. If you stream your clips at 128K/Bps stereo, each 
connecting player will
use 256K/Bps, so only 6 users could connect to your RSB server at any time 
without problems. And at 256K/Bps, you will not get too many modem
users connecting.

So one must make a decision at what to set the stream rates not only on 
what one's server's internet connection is rated at, but what the users will be
connecting at. 24K/Bps Stereo will give a reasonable quality signal that 
56K modem users will be able to connect to, and for the same line capacity 
would
allow approx. 32 simultaneous connections. Going down to 16K/Bps still 
gives an acceptable sound and reduces the demand on the bandwidth. Of 
course, one has to calculate how much bandwidth is needed for the regular 
web content, mail and other services.

One also has to take into consideration the length of the clips (in time). 
It is a good idea to have short streamed samples instead of actual full 
lenght sound clips, that can be then downloaded. It would be an utterly bad 
idea put a self activated video clip (of a considerable length at that) on 
your front page when you have a substantial amount of visitors per day 
(several K) or surges of a lot of simultaneous connections at any given 
time--like announcing on your mailing list of 1500 subscribers that you 
just posted this cool video clip--http or rstp don't matter then. :-)