We provide online educational applications to schools and use Java2D
and jxta for P2P. Think of it as a combo on education with mini-game
like environment. A large activity may contain over 200 questions and
approach 200MB in audio and images. We use Peer2Peer (jxta) to
download jars to one student ... then the other (~35) students
download from the first student. This is to reduce bandwidth strain on
DSL or T-1 pipe often running on older (i.e., slower) PC equipment. We
are looking at Flex. Our application is dynamic in the sense that the
next "scene/question" will vary depending on how a student answers a
question. That is, it is not a straight, linear "video" ... but an
interactive Q&A session. We read that Flex supports "streaming".
QUESTION -- Is this "streaming" only for linear "video" clips ... or
can it act as "lazy loading" whereby a student just begins downloading
what he needs at the moment without trying to download clips he will
not need until later? ALSO, I can see how this streaming would be
great for one user ... but how would it work if there were 36
users/students all trying to "stream" through the same relatively
small pipe (DSL or T-1)? Or is there some way to "cache" these
audio/image resources so that the first student downloads it, and
remaining students do not do remote download from server, but download
from first student ... i.e., P2P-like? BOTTOM LINE -- Would Flex
"streaming" work on a DSL or T-1 for 36 simultaneous users/students
trying to pull down a lot of MBs of audio and image resources?
