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chicagohotdog
Known Participant
July 25, 2010
Question

Many-to-many capability w/interactive server?

  • July 25, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 678 views

Good morning!

I am completely new to Flash server.

We seek to create a remote learning environment (distance learning) with complete interactivity.  In particular, a talk can be delivered simultaneouslty to 20 students.  The students can each see all the other students plus the speaker (as in a boarder of faces around the edge of the screen).  Each is free to converse with the class and teacher (unless capability is turned off by teacher).

Based upon what I have read Flash Interactive server will perform in a one-to-many mode.  Now, how about the many-to-many as described above?  What sort of requirements would be need to be met both at the server and on the individual laptops/desktops/netbooks?

Thanks for your feedback.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    C
    chicagohotdogAuthor
    Known Participant
    October 23, 2010

    Does anyone know of implementations of the server?  More is better.

    Thanks.

    C
    chicagohotdogAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 25, 2010

    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/calculating_bandwidth.html

    It appears that the answer is an unqualified YES.

    The above listed link leads to an Adobe knowledgebase document that details the means of calculating bandwidth in a one-to-many and in a many-to-many situation.  The many-to-many is actually compared to a conferencing session.

    I would still very much appreciate a network engineering-type to look at my original question and compare it to this reply.

    Thanks.

    The best hot dogs in the world used to come from Chicago--now, they live in the White House.

    chicagohotdog

    A
    Anonymous
    July 26, 2010

    What you've described is certainly possible, but may not neccesarily be practical. Having 20 always on video streams will introduce significant bandwidth requirments, and may prove to be a bit more load than the processor in the average netbook is equipped to handle.

    Let's consider the 20 participant scenario you described, and let's assume each audio/video stream is published at 100kbps combined. That would mean that each particpant would be consuming about 1.9Mbps of downstream bandwidth, which may not be realistic for all of the participants. On the server side, you'd have 400 streams, and you'd be burning roughly 39Mbps. If you're only running one of these classrooms it may be workable, but if you're talking about multiple concurrent classrooms, the bandwidth requirements will add up fairly quickly, you'd need to expand to multiple servers after you reach the need for more than 3 or 4 of these classrooms, and you'd be burning data transfer at a rate of roughly .28GB per minute per classroom.

    There's also the human element to consider. If everyone observes etiquette and people aren't trying to speak over one another, having so many partcipants at once may work. That said, if even a few of the users are talking at once, the experience will degrade pretty quickly.

    It may prove more practical to allow the instructor or moderator to allow publishing on an as-needed or as-requested basis, having the concept of "hand raising" via user interface controls and only having a few participants actively broadcasting at any given time (let the moderator select the users who are being broadcast to the group). That way, you can more readily control bandwidth requirements, and the instructor/moderator has an easy means of keeping the experience good for all of the participants

    C
    chicagohotdogAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 26, 2010

    Hello Jay,

    Thanks very much for your response.

    Greg. Eckrich

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