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The bandwidth problem
time to read 1 min | 112 words
Well, looks like I don't have free bandwidth :-) The recent release of Hibernating Rhino #8 has made it clear, since it resulted in a bill.
Now I am looking for a solution for that. We are talking about files on the ~100 - 200 MB range, downloaded tens of thousands of times, over long period of time.
I thought about setting up a torrent server, but I can't find any viable torrent server for Windows, and I don't want to run the torrents from my machine. (I have a server available, if needed)
The other option is hosting it someplace that doesn't mind the bandwidth. Any suggestions?
Comments
With torrents, you should only need to host the tiny .torrent file on your web site. An open public tracker will work fine for you and as long as a few seeds remain available there's no maintenance required. All you have to do is seed it initially.
For example the torrent I created for you last night now has 6 seeds and a couple more leeching. This will hopefully grow and gain momentum. I started this off yesterday on my home internet connection with an upload speed of just 40K/s.
I'd advise you post the torrent file itself on your downloads page ASAP, otherwise anyone who missed your post last night will head straight for the bandwidth-hungry zip file.
@ayende: Have you considered hosting it on Amazon S3? The bandwidth cost is very reasonable, and creating a page to access it should be straightforward as well.
Ayende;
Try Driveway.com, there you can share big files. For free you get a 2GB drive.
Mario
I would second Edward on S3. It is very easy to setup, extremely cheap (.18 cents per GB for the first 10 TB, then goes down from there), and can be accessed easily through a simple http link. I also use s3 fox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247) to manage it, since Amazon does not have a good web based management solution.
Hi,
You can publish your videos at youtube too. (why not!)
Ok, maybe this is a bit niave, but if you host your app on sourceforge or codeplex you don't have to pay for bandwidth, do you?
BOb
@Justin: I favour Torrents, it wass Matt who mentioned S3. But you still have to pay for S3, Torrent is free.
Tell your torrent client to stop seeding once you have uploaded 5 copies.
This is not an app, however.
If you encode your videos with a Silverlight compatible encoder you can host up to 10GB for free in http://silverlight.live.com
<nag>
If you put my torrent file on your download page, people might use it -and we'll know if it's an effective way for you to distribute your screencasts. Your blog post last night will soon be buried and then no-one will remember that the torrent exists.
</nag>
It's a good vid, by the way - async messages are a nice model. I saw the recording of Udi's session at Oredev last year and together your thoughts have got me thinking a lot.
S3 supports torrents. Create the file as usual and it can act as a seeder that is always available. BTW, S3 costs 18c per GB, not .018 cents as qutoed above.
The silverlight idea actually looks the easiest and simplest way for your situation.
What about google video?
So many free providers. Just need to pick one that'll stick around forever (ahem maybe not silverlight).
What about http://skydrive.live.com/? 5 GB per user
skydrive looks cool, but the max file size is 50MB
you would have to split it into pieces with winrar or something
Try setting up a torrent. We'll get seeds.
Try the silverlight as it's meant to host videos and free (but limited to 2gb in size I think)
There's google video and youtube which I think are viable (I would personally go with google vid as there are a lot of Agile screen casts up there)
Keep it simple and use Sourceforge.
Torrents are definitely the way to go. You still need a source available in full form, but 90% of the bandwidth you'll use for this video occurs within a week of you posting it.
You might say... grab the torrent here. and then when things slow down, also post the full file.
In 3 years the torrent will be likely be dead but some schmo will want to watch the video.
I'm curious, how much was your bill? Hopefully ad revenue covered it!
Use Amazon S3. You can access the file as a torrent by appending a ?torrent on the filename. For example, http://myhost.s3.amazon.com/blah.exe?torrent
And it's uber cheap.
How about asking for donations from those who downloaded.
I personally snagged all 8 videos in one go.
I'd be more than happy to donate $1.00 / video to the cause for the excellent educational material.
Got paypal?
Jeremy, yes:
http://www.ayende.com/donations.aspx
Give FileDropper a try. It's free and allows up to 5GB per file. For 0.99 per month you can manage (delete, keep, pwprotect, ...) your files.
From my Experiance you might have to split file into 100MB chunks.
ralf
BTW: I +1 the idea of a donation (even if I havent looked at the screencast yet)
Donation made!
Even if it took me three tries to fill out the damn form.
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