Programming Flash Communication Server

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Preface

• Enable multiuser video conferencing and similar applications

• Start video playing as soon as possible

• Implement bandwidth detection to optimize video serving

• Monitor quality of service and provide logging, tracking, and reporting statistics

• Maintain full scripting control of streams for detailed interactive control of the

video experience

• Easily change content by updating external videos (this also applies to progres-

sive download)

• Use less client memory and disk space (especially true for large videos)

• Minimize the network load because only the portion of the video that is viewed

needs to be downloaded

• Securely deliver copyrighted material without its being saved to the user’s cache

See also Chapters 5 and 7 in this book for details on streaming.

Licensing and Hosting Options

This book does not focus on the numerous server configuration details, nor does it

offer networking hardware advice. If you don’t want to run FlashCom Server from

your own hardware, many different options are available for hosting communication

applications. You can load FlashCom on a server you control. In that case, you, your

organization, or your customers will have to pay for the FlashCom license, server,

and bandwidth necessary to support your applications. FlashCom includes a license

manager that monitors the number of simultaneous client connections and the band-

width being consumed by the server. The license manager ensures that FlashCom

will refuse connections after the number of clients or the allowed bandwidth has

been exceeded. Information on FlashCom licensing options is available here:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashcom/productinfo/editions

If you do not want to host the server yourself, a number of companies specialize in

FlashCom hosting.

The Flash Video Streaming Service is a load-balanced, redundant deployment of

FlashCom Server, hosted by a Macromedia-authorized Content Delivery Network

partner. For details, see:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashcom/fvss

Speedera offers FlashCom video-on-demand hosting. For details, see:

http://www.speedera.com