Streaming video "kill the network" argument

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cpliu - 20 Nov 2003 19:53 GMT

When I brought up the steaming video issue, his initial reaction was it
would kill the network from mission critical tasks and it would cost a lot
for the storage. What I don't understand is: if it's for intranet, it's
50KB/sec and it can only be 250KB/sec if we have 5 concurrent connections.
Will 250KB/sec kill 2 T-1 lines (2 in and 2 out)? What counter-argument do
I have for his assumption (besides the 250KB bandwidth requirement)?

My plan is to use Windows Media Services to stream WMV files.

Thanks for any suggestion,

cpliu

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Shrivel - 20 Nov 2003 22:39 GMT

while it may not "kill" the connection completely, streaming traffic of any
kind can have a dramatic effect on the general "speed" of the entire
network. Unlike most network traffic, which is generally small packets sent
in small bursts, a stream is a constant use of bandwidth.

Typically a handful of streams of even that size could increase the latency
of the network noticeably, even over a couple T-1s.

> When I brought up the steaming video issue, his initial reaction was it
> would kill the network from mission critical tasks and it would cost a lot
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> cpliu

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Mike M. - 21 Nov 2003 14:06 GMT

You could always multicast a single instance of the stream. Then you would
only have 1 x bitstream rate of bandwidth. Of course it is not on demand
and viewers would have no control over the stream.

> When I brought up the steaming video issue, his initial reaction was it
> would kill the network from mission critical tasks and it would cost a lot
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> cpliu

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