[videoblogging] bits per second... bumped message from Andrew baron for reference

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 09:58:10 -0800

thought i would bump this message from Andrew back up... since i have been talking about it in the vlogger coop thread....

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: andrew michael baron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Jan 26, 2006 10:11 PM
Subject: Re: [videoblogging] Re: Dreamhost $9.24/ yr is back
To: videoblogging@yahoogroups.com

 While no doubt these prices are super great and only getting greater, and it's a very useful automated service, there is one technical restriction that is important to understand, which is not expressed as "excitement" with this plan: Bits per second.

Sometimes painting a picture works better for an explanation:

Think of your website as sitting on a computer connected to the internet with a pipe. If that pipe is really large and wide, a lot of people can be coming and going very easily. If your pipe is small, it may not matter when you have just a few passerby's, but if, say, one day you get a lot of traffic, it wont all fit through your door and it will get clogged up.

The only way to resolve the issue is not to get more bandwidth or more space, but rather, to get get a bigger pipe.

Dreamhost typically runs, I believe, 100megabits/sec max on their dedicated servers. 

This is a good pipe, and can take a big hit, but not very gracefully (runs slow) and not several hits at once.

To make maters worse, the low-end Dreamhost plans as mentioned, dont get a full 100mbs server. They SHARE the little pipe with others. And if one of those "others" gets some traffic, and you get some traffic, then everybody is screwed.

So then Dreamhost will e-mail the "obnoxious" person who is getting lots of traffic and "invite" them to upgrade to their own 100mbs dedicated server and help out the other poor customers who are just trying to get by, not using much (appeal to emotion).

Depending on how you look at it, this is not a bad thing, its merely a sign of growth; start off strapped and stumble your way up. I say stumble because you usually only upgrade after things go wrong, not before.

To provide a reference point for the conversation, Rocketboom currently uses 1 dedicated 100mbs server on Dreamhost to handle the database and webpages alone and 2 dedicated 100mbs servers on Datagram to host the videos and the images, for a total of a 300mbit/sec pipe size. The 2 datagram servers are mirror images (they both hold the same video and image files) and every single request for a video or image is alternated like a switch back and forth to each of the two servers. Our audience number is about 150,000/day of steady flow and every video now gets over 250,000 downloads (mostly reaching that number over the course of a few days). Last month we used 12 terabytes of data transfer on the two Datagram servers and not more than a Terrabyte on the Dreamhost server (mostly html and xml pages). 

In the morning, about 5 minutes after I ping a couple of sites, do to aggregators taking automatic action all at once, our pipes get completely maxed out (300mbs full on) for about 30 minutes while things run slow.

Now it's time to spread out the pings. It's also time for us to add another 200 megabits or so to allow for any additional, unusual traffic during that time and to consider upgrading to a single 1000 megabit server pipe on Datagram, with a desire to keep things running smoothly no matter what happens.

As another reference point, we have been though some pretty heavy days where a lot of major sites have linked to us all at once, and having 300mbits has worked fine (as long as it was not around the release hour where the aggregators were all at work). As an aside, you can imagine how efficient and cheap it would be if all of those aggregators were using p2p distribution, because all of those people could be sharing the bandwidth amoungst themselves and via closer proximities.

The moral of the story is, if you anticipate growth and wish to provide a solid user experience so that everyone gets their file quickly and easily, a strategy we have demanded from the start which, I believe, used to put almost all of the major news video sites to shame with their famous "buffering messages", get a bigger pipe (and dont stream!). On the contrary, if you are just doing your own thing and dont really care about that, or only become effected minimally from time to time, smile on about that $9 plan.

It would be interesting to hear some stats from some of the big aggregators or video hosting sites like Vimeo, Ourmedia, Blip, etc. I assume Archive.org talks in terms of warehouses per country.

On Jan 26, 2006, at 7:04 PM, Ronen wrote:

What's the catch here?

On 1/26/06, bleedxapathy <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
dammit!
i just used Deal90 this week!


On 1/26/06, Patrick < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Go to http://dreamhost.com

Select: the L1 "Crazy Domain Insane" hosting plan.

Before you checkout, you will see an option to enter your promo code.
Enter 777 which will reduce your total from $119.24 to $9.24.

I signed up an hour or two ago, no problem. 

-Patrick



--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Markus Sandy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> i see nothing offered for the price you state
>
> please give a link to the actual page that mentions this offer
>
>
>
>
> Patrick wrote:
>
> >Not sure if this has already been posted, but I thought it might be of
> >interest to some.
> >
> > www.dreamhost.com
> >
> >Signup for the L1 "Crazy Domain Insane" hosting for 1 year for $9.24
> >and use promo code: 777
> >
> >1 FREE domain registration www.yourname.com
> >UNLIMITED domains hosted
> >UNLIMITED subdomains
> >20 GB Disk, 1 TB Transfer
> >600 Mailboxes, 75 Shell/FTP Users
> >
> >-Patrick
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >.
> >
> > 
> >
>
>
> --
>
> My name is Markus Sandy and I am app.etitio.us
>
> http://apperceptions.org
> http://digitaldojo.blogspot.com
> http://node101.org
> http://spinflow.org
> http://wearethemedia.com
> http://xpressionvlog.blogspot.com
>
> aim/ichat: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> skype: msandy
> spin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>





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