Thank you Jochem this is very informative. We are looking closely at the Flash Communication Server for use on a Rock Musician/Producer site we are working on and your metrics will be helpful.
Kind Regards - Mike Brunt, CTO Webapper http://www.webapper.com Downey CA Office 562.243.6255 AIM - webappermb "Webapper - Making the NET work" -----Original Message----- From: Jochem van Dieten [mailto:jochemd@;oli.tudelft.nl] Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 5:30 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: [OT] DevCon Community Suite Broadcast wrap-up Upon request, this is a writeup of the broadcast of the videostreams from the Community Suite. This is only about technical/operational issues, a more 'community oriented' message will be sent to cf-community, accessible through the archives at http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=threads&forumid=5 I am sure the Master and the Mistress of the House of Fusion have something to add about how it looked from their side :) -- The short version of what happened here: On Thursday (Friday?) Michael announced he would have an internet connection at the Suite and that he wanted to set up a webcam. I offered to run some reflector/relay, and we decided on FlashCom. I installed FlashCom trial edition [1] Friday night, and a Michael dropped by to verify that his webcam was compatible. On Saturday I worked a bit on the Flash movie that was going to do the work. Based on the Sample Panel Application that comes with FlashCom Server and a tutorial at the DesDev center [2] it took about 10 minutes to make some minor modifications for the application. We went life on Monday, and after about 45(?) minutes the FlashCom Server crashed. Restarting worked until 6 lines were entered in the chat again. The solution was twofold; first delete a corrupted log file so it could write past the 6 lines without becoming unresponsive (submitted as a bug); and then apply the fix from release notes [3] that several people from Macromedia suggested to prevent the initial crash. After that, the server went up and stayed up until I switched it off today. Tuesday, the presentation Hal Helms gave at the Community Suite was broadcasted live, and the program from Wednesday was also broadcasted. -- I have some statistics over the first 24 hours, basically from the moment the server was stable on Monday (about 21:30 UTC). simultaneous visitor high: 24 maximum bandwidth used: <500 kbps total incoming bytes: 600 MB total outgoing bytes: 1.8 GB CPU load: <9% (Duron 800 MHz) The movie itself was 50 KB to download. It got a bit busier later on, but I didn't run statistics anymore (although I believe that the bytecounter for netstat resets at 4 GB, so that would put total outgoing bytes at 2.7 GB and incoming at 0.9 GB for day 2, but these numbers are not very accurate). -- It appears that the default chat component is not suited for prolonged use. CPU usage goes from an initial 3 % to 50+ % after being logged in for 12 hours. This is the same issue as Mike Chambers mentioned before, and apparently it can be set to keep less text in the buffer somewhere, which is highly recommended (but I haven't figured out how just yet). It is not an IE issue, it occurs in other browsers as well. The webcam eats CPU on the client side. I guess it really pays to use good hardware for it, because setting the stream to a higher quality or bitrate did not improve the quality, which makes me believe that the webcam was the limiting factor. (In hindsight, it would probably have been better to provide a separate Flash movie just for the webcam, without the chat function. It requires a second computer if you want to chat from the Suite, but the lag at one point was over a minute.) Time to prepare is nice. Determining the optimum movie settings for a particular camera takes time. Bandwidth from the webcam to the server is probably not the weakest link, and should not be an issue as soon as you have DSL/ISDN or better. -- Overall, I like FlashCom [insert obligatory remark about multicast support here]. I am thinking about the possibilities for the European Developers Conference [4] already. Jochem [1]http://www.macromedia.com/software/trial_download/ [2]http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/flashcom/articles/first_comm_app.html [3]http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashcom/releasenotes/mx/rn_mx.html [4]http://www.cf-europe.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/cf_talk FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm
