Hello,

I have two questions:

Is FMS Unicast or Multicast?

What are the pros/cons with FMS vs WMS?

The reason for my questions is that my company has a Flash Streaming Server
and a Windows Media server and we would like streaming video of conferences
displayed on our Intranet. I have setup the streaming service and am using
flash media encoder. However, we also stream other content to a windows media
player and the benefits of that is the ability to Multicast. I would like to
use FMS because I can customize the experience but I know I will have to
justify against a multicasting system

Thank you for your time

FMS is unicast... each client connects directly to the server, and consumes
bandwidth at the rate the video is encoded at.

I think the best arguments for FMS is the immediate wide reach across
platforms, and as you mentioned, the ability to use video as part of a larger
application. There's also the instant-on graticiation you get with the
flashplayer (there's a lot to be said for "play means play").

The cons? Well... user for user, FMS is very expensive, particularly if you
plan to serve between 1 and 10000 concurrent users (there's no special price
deals for multiple pro licenses, and you'll only get 150 concurrent users per
$4500 license). The unicast issue makes things more expensive as well, as
you'll pay for every byte each client sends and receives.

Well you can switch between 150 / 1000 or 2500 concurent users per $4500
license since Adobe created the flexible licenses. You just need to pick a
profile in fms.ini as the default profile. It will run only if detecting a
valid license key; otherwise it will fallback to free developer.

Regards
Andy

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

JayCharles I have a total of 1300 users and the max amount of people that
would be viewing this live presentaion would be about 800. We purchased the
profile for 1000 concurrent users and we currently broadcast recorded media
through FMS and live TV through WMS. I am leaning towards the FMS solution
because it is flexible and can interact with the users. Is this a fair
assumption.

Andytes thank you for following up because I got scared at the 150 concurrent
users and then realized we purchased the 1000 concurrent users.

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]andytes[/b][/b][/i]
Well you can switch between 150 / 1000 or 2500 concurent users per $4500
license since Adobe created the flexible licenses. You just need to pick a
profile in fms.ini as the default profile. It will run only if detecting a
valid license key; otherwise it will fallback to free developer.

Regards
Andy[/q]

In my experience, the 40/1000 and 25/2500 models are only really useful if
your applications are more about data than video. After running numbers based
on delivering a 300kbps stream, you only get 16 more users with 40/1000 as
compared to 150/unlimited. If the purpose of the server is to deliver video of
any quality, 150/unlimited is the only way to go.

JayCharles, Thank you for your response. It is very much appreciated.

I had no idead that our 1000/40/ Unlimited would not be sufficient. WOW

I am looking at the adobe pricing here
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/productinfo/pricing/ and I have
a question regarding your suggestion of the 150/unlimited. I was under the
impression that concurrent meant simultaneous and how could I meet my 800 user
needs with only 150 concurrent connections?

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]andytes[/b][/b][/i]
Me questioning myself .. Origin/Edge servers?[/q]

Sure... if you happen to have a spare $50,000 (that's about the minimum outlay
to get started with origin/edge). Also, if you plan to do any data handling
(shared objects and such), Origin/edge doesn't work so well (it was really
designed for just streaming video), so it becomes a limiting factor in future
applications.

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]solostruggle[/b][/b][/i]
JayCharles, Thank you for your response. It is very much appreciated.

I had no idead that our 1000/40/ Unlimited would not be sufficient. WOW

I am looking at the adobe pricing here
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/productinfo/pricing/ and I have
a question regarding your suggestion of the 150/unlimited. I was under the
impression that concurrent meant simultaneous and how could I meet my 800 user
needs with only 150 concurrent connections?[/q]

The FMS pro license has 3 profiles. You can choose on profile per server, and
the profile you select applies to all licenses installed on that server (you
can stack up to 10 licenses on a single server).

Assuming you configure the server with the 150/unlimited profile, you can
accomodate 150 users simultaneously on a single license, and they can each
consume as much bandwidth as they want (limited by the physical server and the
internet pipe, of course). If you were to buy two licenses and put them on the
same server, you could have 300 users with no bandwidth limits, 450 users with
3 licenses, and so on.

In the case of the 40/1000 license profile, each license on the server will
give you 1000 connections, or 40mpbs of throughput. As soon as either one of
those limits is reached, the server will reject new connections until both the
number of connections and the bandwidth usage are below license limits. If you
were to install 2 licenses under the 40/1000 profile, you can have 2000
concurrent users, or 80mpbs of bandwidth, whichever comes first.

So, assuming you want to serve good quality video to 800 users simultaneously,
you'll need 6 licenses... which will run you somewhere on the order of $27,000

In any case, handling 800 concurrent user at 300kbit/s requires 240Mbit/s of bandwidth and