Can somebody give me the disadvantages of hosting my flash files outside of the smartfox server, a flash media server?

Is this even possible?

The reason I'm asking is, I am about to launch a massive social networking flash game, but the file itself is pretty heavy. 500kb+

I am expecting a lot of traffic and I would rather get 2 servers: 1 with unmetered bandwidth at 100mbps and another just for the databases & the media server.

Also when the flash files are cached in the user's temp, they dont' redownload the .swfs from the server again right?

Somebody please chime in on the best way to approach this situation Smile

Thanks,
James

Oh and I need somebody to advise me on what server to get. So I need a consultant! PM me, I can pay you by hour!

Can somebody give me the disadvantages of hosting my flash files outside of the smartfox server, a flash media server?

Is this even possible?

The reason I'm asking is, I am about to launch a massive social networking flash game, but the file itself is pretty heavy. 500kb+

The main advantages with flash servers are allowing seeking in video and audio. For games I doubt it would do anything to help.


I am expecting a lot of traffic and I would rather get 2 servers: 1 with unmetered bandwidth at 100mbps and another just for the databases & the media server.

Also when the flash files are cached in the user's temp, they dont' redownload the .swfs from the server again right?

Somebody please chime in on the best way to approach this situation Smile

Thanks,
James

Oh and I need somebody to advise me on what server to get. So I need a consultant! PM me, I can pay you by hour!

For the capacity aspects you could go with lighttpd or litespeed. Both tend to hold up better then apache for large numbers of requests. You could always start out with one server then migrate some of the services to another when you start getting hammered.

Generally the swf will be cached by the browser, but it isn't guaranteed.

You can make the caching of the file more likely, or more reliable by making sure the correct cache control headers are past to the client.

When hosting static files this is usually the case by default, but since you're already thinking about hosting across multiple machine that might not be the case.

Over two or more machines the creation time and E-Tag might be different, forcing the client to re-download the flash file.. and any other static files like CSS, JS, images, etc..

The E-Tag is usual based on the inode number, creation date and some other hashed info.. so across machines these are often different.

Thanks for the responses guys! I really appreciate them.

I forgot to mention my game is multiplayer, so I will be needing a media server to relay information.

So in this case, would it be beneficial for me to have a seperate server just to host the .swf?

Also what controls the caching of the file? Are there specific code in the .swf itself, that shows the correct caching control?