Ok, my knowledge about live video streaming is very limited, where are the experts? :)
A customer of mine want's to setup one or more dedicated server(s) for an (adult) video streaming service. He is not sure if he will go for streaming or for live streaming.

Which software do you recommend? (I would prefer a Linux solution over NT)
Anyone knows the Apple solution for Linux?
How about latency? Are ping times around 200ms too much?
How much can a big server handle?

Any info is appreciated!

Originally posted by Walter

Which software do you recommend? (I would prefer a Linux solution over NT)
Anyone knows the Apple solution for Linux?
How about latency? Are ping times around 200ms too much?
How much can a big server handle?

Any info is appreciated!

Walter, I'm not into the adult 'services' but I can give you a hand on streaming.

@ my previous company, we were a content provider, we used Windows Media, Real and Quicktime since they are the most widespread movie formats.

Windows Media encoder is free of charge and so are the Media Services on the server as long as you have the appropriate license from MS.

The Real Server software runs on Linux but is not free of charge. You have to pay for each concurrent user.

The Quicktime format can be streamed from a linux machine that uses the Darwin (Project) server. I believe it's released under the GPL so it's free of charge. I think you still have to buy the encoder from Apple however.

As for live streaming or on demand.

On demand streaming is cheaper since you only use the bandwith to upload the movie once, if you do live streaming you need to have an open connection to your streaming server.

For the user. Liv(f :) )e streaming is more fun for a client since he or she can act interactively.

A Windows Media server @ our company made it trough 855 simultaneous connections on a concert from a local band. These were only audio @ 96 Kbps

I think most depends on the bandwith you have from your provider.

If your stream is 300 Kbps wide and you only have a 2 Mbps pipeline without multicast .. You're finished after 10 simultaneous connects :)

I haven't tried to crash it yet .. but I can give it a hand :)

If you have some more questions just let me know.

Thank you for your answer.
So which software would you choose? I am currently reading all I can get about the Darwin project...

And how about latency? Are ping times around 200ms too much? My customer is thinking about interactions, so is 2x200 ms to much?