Hosting for 200k visits/day video site.

[goliatone]

Hi there,
in a nutshell:
Ive been asked to propose a hosting plan for a site that will be a navigated video that is expected to have 200.000 visits a day.
Hosting for one year ( best if uk based )
Budget for hosting: around 10.000€/year.

I have to say that unfortunately i dont dispose of much info about the video(s) at all. The video production is yet to be done.

I pretty much assume that there will be one set of main videos that would be the sections of the site, then other set of videos that will be displayed inside those sections.

With flash video+server im out of my depth, but i pretty much assume that streaming is needed.

I would like advice on what to look for and what would be the best way to organize the video content.

ie, should i look for a hosting offering FMS or there are other alternatives- hosting that offers StroboScope Server

what is the impact of expecting 200.000 visits a day?

any comment, ideas or suggestions are more than welcome.

gracias!

[goliatone]

I've just been told that the total video time of the main sections will be of 3 minutes.

Also, they are asking me about wheter using H264 or not (which im really clueless on that).

regards

[asf8]

You can read up on H.264 here - Flash Player:9:Update:H.264
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:H.264

As far as hosts providers maybe these links will help?

Alot of the heavy trafficed FWA sites use MediaTemple:
http://www.mediatemple.net/
http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/

Also here are some various links that might be intersting with providers:

Adobe - Flash Media Server Partners
http://www.adobe.com/partners/flashmediaserver/
Adobe - Flash Video Streaming Service Partners
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/fvss/
Flash Media/FlashCom and Flash Video service providers
http://www.flashcomguru.com/articles/hosts.cfm

Also there are content delivery providers out there, I have no idea about the costs involved for this type service however. But they will stream your content/video etc...

http://www.akamai.com/
http://www.brightcove.com/

Anyway maybe someone else will make a direct recommendation who has experience using a specific provider, this is all just from research I have done so I cant give a first hand recommendation. Keep us posted.

;):)

[goliatone]

hei asf8,
tnxs for the reply. I will take a look into those links you provided.

So far, im looking into uk based hosting providers.
We did use MT, the infamous grid...and didnt like it, moved to a dedicated hosting with 1and1. One of the isues we had with MT was the support, which in our case was slow. Also the being in europe made phone communication a bit hard.

So far, ive contacted 1and1 and see what do they tell us. I feel like we need a tailored plan.

If i make numbers, i go crazy... 200000 visitors a day, 2.3 per second. Most of the users will be from the same country, which means that the traffic load would be concurrent most of the time. Streamed video...

I will update as soon as i get news.

[ASWC]

Companies with this visitor rate should have their own servers. That's a bit strange that with such a visitor rate goal your company is not going for that...

[goliatone]

Now, im wondering if we need Streaming via RTPM or via HTTP would work. It has to be streamed, but there is no live content...
what do you think?

[goliatone]

Companies with this visitor rate should have their own servers. That's a bit strange that with such a visitor rate goal your company is not going for that...

well, its a big campaign for a big client. This client works with an add. agency that subcontracted the web stuff to us. Our regular projects dont require such heavy machinery...

We dont want to deal with the maintenance of the servers or anything related, just propose a good and reliable provider and let them do the work.

At the moment im looking at EUKhost for a Clustered Dedicated Server System. Im wating for a quote.

[jsebrech]

Isn't this a case where you would partner with a content syndication network like akamai? If the stream isn't live, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to host it entirely from your own servers.

I think the key data points here are the number of concurrent streams, and the average bitrate of each stream.

[goliatone]

Isn't this a case where you would partner with a content syndication network like akamai? If the stream isn't live, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to host it entirely from your own servers.

I think the key data points here are the number of concurrent streams, and the average bitrate of each stream.
I just reached the same conclusion.
I came here to post that i was looking into panther cdn system earlier and that we got some quotes from them... We are making figures now.

tnxs for the reply