Problem with FMS host and streaming audio

[route3w]

I have built a flash streaming audio presentation for a client. Originally, this was built using the flash MediaPlayback component connecting to an mp3 file sitting on the same server (running screens with cuepoints like a Powerpoint presentation). Due to larger orders for this presentation, my client and I decided to upgrade to streaming the mp3 files from a Flash Media Server several months ago. We chose Influxis as the hosting provider (They are located in California.) The .swf file is located on our local hosting company's server in Indiana. We have offices in England and in India trying to watch these presentations, which have for the most part been successful, but on occasion people from overseas have complained about the presentation stopping and not moving forward about half-way through (it is about 40 minutes total). Any thoughts on what is causing the problems and what can be done to help eliminate them? My guess is that there is a problem with a connection to the media server at some point during the presentation.

[Jorge Solis]

Usually people tend to think in Streaming like some kind of television, that never stops. Indeed, tend to complaing about lags all the time. I recently build some online teaching room and the guy seeing in Sri Lanka (yeah, the server in USA, MediaTemple) complains about lags. This is usually due to latency between points, just try some ping from the end point to the server IP and you will notice the latency. And this is just a time in the Net life, because conditions tend to vary upon time, so a measure in the morning is not the same as a measure in the nigth. Things to minimize:

- Always check latency
- Always buffer content based on it
- If realtime is critical, use some server with less latency in relationship to the end point. There are some streaming networks that offers proximity service like Akamai (here you can see a description in how it works: http://www.epinions.com/content_20878954116 ) They support Flash also
- User speed connection is also critical. Doesn't matter where the server is, but if user connection is bad, there's nothing to do

Jorge

[route3w]

Great, thanks for the information Jorge. This helps a lot.