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Thread: Providing Multimedia for a College

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    Question Providing Multimedia for a College

    I work at a College of 1200 users 550 workstations. User accounts are spread across 3 servers. There is additional traffic generated by ip cctv cameras on the network that run back to a Bosch DiBOS box. Most of our network is covered by 1Gb fibre optic with a few departments/classrooms on just 100Mb.

    There is an increasing demand for multimedia and we are concerned that our system may begin to struggle to provide resources as fast as it might. The type of media we're expecting to have to deliver are clips captured from DVDs What measures shall I consider in improving our delivery of multimedia across the network? Is a dedicated server the only sensible option or could I pursue a cheaper (?) array of scsi hard drivers?

    Are there other important area that I have neglected to consider?

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    Re: Providing Multimedia for a College

    Is the network struggling? I would imagine a 100MB/s switched network would run DVD quality video just fine.

    What kind of switching do you have going on? A decent NAS device could act as a repository for the Video files, unless you need some kind of streaming functionality?

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    Re: Providing Multimedia for a College

    If the networks are full and need more capacity, cant you just replace the 100mb switches to ones with gigabit uplink and 100mb to locally connected computers? - just certain links that need more capacity. They should be able to run on the same cables.
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    Re: Providing Multimedia for a College

    Thank you for your reply. The network copes with delivering resources including .ISOs to virtual CD-ROM drives fine at the moment but we have just adopted a frog VLE and given the increasing demand e-learning we are trying to prevent problems before they occur.

    There's the potential for two classes for 30 students to launch the same video clip at the same time. I think the current system will struggle to cope with this.

    I forgot to mention that we are planning to launch a radiostation that streams audio via Streaming media server such as shoutcast. It might make sense to use the same server to stream the radio audio and to store to the dvd footage.

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    Re: Providing Multimedia for a College

    Sounds like you might need redundant servers that can serve separate network sectors with the same items - and carry each others loads if called upon to do so.

    But I dont know much about networks - so dont even know if the above mentioned setup will be possible without significant expenses.
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    Re: Providing Multimedia for a College

    If you've got a network that has a primarily gigabit backbone, then you should be fine on the network side of things. Note that PCs do not need Gigabit cards in them - a decent 10/100 switch with a 1000mb uplink port should suffice.

    In terms of loading DVDs across the network, would it not be better to use something like DivX to encode it, and remove the large bandwidth requirements? As long as you aren't planning on using large screen high def tvs to show the video, the quality should be good enough.

    In terms of the server side of things, a decent server should be able to manage the above fine, something like a Dual Xeon with 2 or 4 gb of RAM and 10k RPM SCSI discs - much like a domain level server would be. Are you running a main fibre switch at the centre of your network? if so when choosing the server spec the fibre network cards, as it removes the need for media converters.

    Just some thoughts anyhow.

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