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solostruggle
Participant
August 23, 2007
Question

Is FMS Unicast or Multicast? Pro/Con FMS vs WMS

  • August 23, 2007
  • 9 replies
  • 1257 views
Hello,

I have two questions:

Is FMS Unicast or Multicast?

What are the pros/cons with FMS vs WMS?

The reason for my questions is that my company has a Flash Streaming Server and a Windows Media server and we would like streaming video of conferences displayed on our Intranet. I have setup the streaming service and am using flash media encoder. However, we also stream other content to a windows media player and the benefits of that is the ability to Multicast. I would like to use FMS because I can customize the experience but I know I will have to justify against a multicasting system

Thank you for your time
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    9 replies

    andytes
    Participating Frequently
    August 24, 2007
    Me questioning myself .. Origin/Edge servers?
    Anonymous
    August 24, 2007
    quote:
    Originally posted by: andytes
    Me questioning myself .. Origin/Edge servers?


    Sure... if you happen to have a spare $50,000 (that's about the minimum outlay to get started with origin/edge). Also, if you plan to do any data handling (shared objects and such), Origin/edge doesn't work so well (it was really designed for just streaming video), so it becomes a limiting factor in future applications.

    solostruggleAuthor
    Participant
    August 24, 2007
    Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

    JayCharles I have a total of 1300 users and the max amount of people that would be viewing this live presentaion would be about 800. We purchased the profile for 1000 concurrent users and we currently broadcast recorded media through FMS and live TV through WMS. I am leaning towards the FMS solution because it is flexible and can interact with the users. Is this a fair assumption.

    Andytes thank you for following up because I got scared at the 150 concurrent users and then realized we purchased the 1000 concurrent users.
    andytes
    Participating Frequently
    August 24, 2007
    Well you can switch between 150 / 1000 or 2500 concurent users per $4500 license since Adobe created the flexible licenses. You just need to pick a profile in fms.ini as the default profile. It will run only if detecting a valid license key; otherwise it will fallback to free developer.

    Regards
    Andy
    Anonymous
    August 24, 2007
    quote:
    Originally posted by: andytes
    Well you can switch between 150 / 1000 or 2500 concurent users per $4500 license since Adobe created the flexible licenses. You just need to pick a profile in fms.ini as the default profile. It will run only if detecting a valid license key; otherwise it will fallback to free developer.

    Regards
    Andy


    In my experience, the 40/1000 and 25/2500 profiles are only really useful if your applications are more about data than video. After running numbers based on delivering a 300kbps stream, you only get 16 more users with 40/1000 as compared to 150/unlimited. If the purpose of the server is to deliver video of any quality, 150/unlimited is the only way to go.

    If you're serving up video under 300kbps, then you'll get a few more users with 40/1000, but you won't be able to effectively serve the video to 1000 users. Once the 40mbps is reached, additional connection requests will be rejected by the server.

    To serve your 800 clients on the 40/1000 profile, the video would have to be encoded at about 50kbps (including the audio)... not very workable.


    solostruggleAuthor
    Participant
    August 24, 2007
    JayCharles, Thank you for your response. It is very much appreciated.

    I had no idead that our 1000/40/ Unlimited would not be sufficient. WOW

    I am looking at the adobe pricing here http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/productinfo/pricing/ and I have a question regarding your suggestion of the 150/unlimited. I was under the impression that concurrent meant simultaneous and how could I meet my 800 user needs with only 150 concurrent connections?
    Anonymous
    August 24, 2007
    FMS is unicast... each client connects directly to the server, and consumes bandwidth at the rate the video is encoded at.

    I think the best arguments for FMS is the immediate wide reach across platforms, and as you mentioned, the ability to use video as part of a larger application. There's also the instant-on graticiation you get with the flashplayer (there's a lot to be said for "play means play").

    The cons? Well... user for user, FMS is very expensive, particularly if you plan to serve between 1 and 10000 concurrent users (there's no special price deals for multiple pro licenses, and you'll only get 150 concurrent users per $4500 license). The unicast issue makes things more expensive as well, as you'll pay for every byte each client sends and receives.
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