Blog
Streaming Servers / John Thwaites
John Thwaites, managing director of Vyoo looks at why investing in streaming video might be important for your company's web presence.
There are http servers and there are streaming servers. Http servers are good for standard, static web pages. When video comes from an http server, your computer downloads all the content of the entire file first and then plays it back. This can take a long time depending on the user's connection and the size of the file.
Alternatively, you can watch the video file embedded into a web page. In this case, the file will buffer or download some of the file and then start playing, though you may get inconsistent playback as the download tries to catch up with the 'playhead'.
Each of these methods rely on a normal http servers downloading data to you as best as it can, and the speed of download depends on the user's connection and how many users are making the same request.
On the other hand, a streaming video server gives each user a dedicated connection sending lots of little packets of data in a consistent stream and does not download first. So, the difference is that you have a unique connection to the material you wish to view, which is being shown to you at 25 frames per second and not downloaded to your computer.
The streaming server is managing each viewer as an individual connection. As such, streaming servers are more expensive because they need to have the capacity to provide thousands of concurrent, dedicated connections which demands a great deal of memory capacity and server software to manage this. However for a smooth, high quality, secure and shared video experience these resources are essential.
We'll take it as read that you already have an http server hosting your site. So why would you need an additional streaming server for video?
A streaming server expands the bandwidth available to a level that satisfies each additional concurrent viewer. In this way the video quality levels are maintained. Each extra viewer on a non-streaming server has to share the bandwidth fixed for that video amongst all the viewers of theat video with a resulting decrease in quality. However, the viewer may be watching a low quality video that demands less bandwidth which, of course, will run from your current server.
If you do not have a multiple and synchronous viewer requirement, and the current video quality serves its purpose, there would be no real reason for you to think about streaming video.
Knowing that your users can view content as and when they need it is vital. Your http server will presumably come with a service level agreement - with vyoo you get the same level of confidence knowing that we're online and worldwide all of the time.
We have servers in the UK and international partnerships with network providers the world over. The servers are replicated and mirrored, which means that a failure in one drive does not cause a failure in service. In addition copies of the servers are replicated or 'clustered' in various cities - Singapore, Houston, Milan and Sydney - to ensure worldwide consistency of service. What we can't control however, is the bandwidth and contention ratio of the user’s broadband service in their home, office or internet cafe. If there is a high contention ratio on a broadband connection, where many customers share the same "pipe", the smooth delivery of high resolution video streams can be compromised - especially if all of the users are streaming video at the same time.
