Calculating bandwidth and software

license needs for Flash Media Server

3
Adobe

If you want to incorporate audio, video, or both into your web

applications, you should first develop a bandwidth strategy. The
purpose of it is to ensure that the total amount of bandwidth served
by Flash Media Server and consumed by each client is sufficient to
deliver the quality of service you want, is in line with the physical
hardware limitations and software licenses you have, and can
accommodate various levels of traffic. Like any good functional
specification, a bandwidth strategy should highlight any problem
areas up front before you purchase systems or develop your
application.
If you have not developed your bandwidth strategy yet, this article
will help you out. It examines ways you can estimate your
application's bandwidth to help determine your software license
needs for Flash Media Server.
The amount of peak bandwidth used by Flash Media Server depends
on a number of factors, such as the bandwidth that users connect
at, the bandwidth in your pipeline, the bandwidth of the audio and
video streams, and, of course, the type of application you develop—
is it a one-way streaming application or a two-way/multi-way chat
application?
To estimate the bandwidth that your Flash Media Server application
will use, you will need to know the following:

• Number of simultaneous users your application must support

at peak load
• Data transmission speed at which you expect your users to
connect (what percent of users will be on a 56 Kbps dial-up
connection, cable/DSL, or a LAN?)
• Number of audio/video streams your application will support
per user
• Limitations of the server hardware and Internet connection
• Target encoding rate of the audio and video streams in your
application

At this point you should also have a relatively firm idea of the
functionality of your application and how users will be interacting
with it. Now you need to figure out how to calculate your
application's overall bandwidth.

Requirements
To follow along with this article, you'll need the following software:

Flash Media Server 3

• Try
• Buy

Bandwidth calculations

You can easily estimate bandwidth for two different types of

applications: a one-to-many application, such a video-on-demand
system; and a many-to-many application, such as a video
conferencing application. For each example you can follow a simple
formula for calculating both the server bandwidth (required to
determine the number of software licenses you need) and the client
bandwidth (calculated as part of your bandwidth strategy to ensure
good quality of service to each client).

Example 1: One to many

This sample application is a one-way video-on-demand system that

streams recorded video at the user's request. Flash Media Server
serves only one stream to each user (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. One-to-many video-on-demand system

Bandwidth calculations

Here are the bandwidth calculations you would make:

• Calculating server bandwidth needs (BWs):

BWs = N × S
N = number of simultaneous users (subscribers)
S = average bitrate of encoded A/V content
 • Calculating client bandwidth needs (BWc):
BWc = S
S = average bitrate of encoded A/V content

Sample calculation

Calculate the overall server bandwidth needed to stream video

encoded at 500 Kbps to 1000 simultaneous users:
500 Mbps = 1000 × 500 Kbps
This calculation determines the overall bandwidth and can help you
determine how many servers and licenses are needed. For example,
if your server hardware configuration is capable of 600 Mbps
throughput, you would need only one server and license.
Of course, if you wanted to stream to more users, you would need
as many servers and licenses as are required to cover your overall
server bandwidth. For example, 10,000 simultaneous users will
require the following:
5000 Mbps = 10,000 × 500 Kbps
Assuming each server configuration is capable of 600 Mbps, you
would need:
8.3 = 5000 Mbps ÷ 600 Mbps
This rounds up to nine servers and licenses.

Adjusting the calculation for multiple bitrates

The preceding calculations assume that content is encoded at a

constant bitrate. Most often, however, you will vary the bitrate of
the content to suit the viewing audience. This affects your
bandwidth needs at both the client and server level.
For example, suppose in the previous example you estimated that
half of the 1000 simultaneous users were going to connect via 350
Kbps DSL modem and the other half via 3 Mbps cable modem.
Suppose further that while the video encoded at 500 Kbps was
appropriate for the cable viewers, you wanted to encode a separate
video at 150 Kbps for the DSL modem users.
In this case, the total bandwidth required of the system is lowered
to 325 Mbps:
325 Mbps = (500 Kbps × 500) + (150 Kbps × 500)

Example 2: Many to many

This example shows a number of people connect to an online

conference room. While in the conference room, each person is
broadcasting their own audio and video (via a webcam, for example)
while receiving the audio and video broadcasts from others in the
room (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Many-to-many video/audio conferencing
Calculating the bandwidth estimates here is very similar to Example
1. However, the number of streams increases exponentially. In this
case, Flash Media Server needs to serve x2 number of streams
where x is the number of simultaneous users in a room.
For example, if there were four people in a room, the first person
would send (publish) one stream and receive three other streams
for a total of four streams. Likewise, the second, third, and fourth
persons would also consume four streams each. Therefore the total
number of streams that Flash Media Server serves in this case is 16
—four people using four streams each, or (thought about in a
slightly different manner) four publishers of streams and four
consumers or subscribers of streams.

Bandwidth calculations

Here are the bandwidth calculations you would make:

• Calculating server bandwidth needs (BWs):

BWs = (P × N) × S
P = number of publishers
N = number of subscribers
S = average stream bitrate of encoded A/V content
 • Calculating client bandwidth needs (BWc):
BWc = P × S
P = number of publishers
S = average stream bitrate of encoded A/V content

Sample calculation

Server bandwidth needed for a four-person webcam chat using 100

Kbps streams:
4.8 Mbps = (4 × 4) × 300 Kbps
Client bandwidth needed for a four-person webcam chat using 100
Kbps streams:
900 Kbps = 3 × 300 Kbps downstream
300 Kbps = 1 × 300 Kbps upstream
How many users can you support on a single server? In this
example, each video conference room generates a bandwidth of 4.8
Mbps. Again assuming 600 Mbps server machine throughput, you
can have 600 Mbps ÷ 4.8 Mbps = 125 rooms. Because each room
has four participants, you can get 125 × 4 = 500 simultaneous
users on one server.

No limit on the number of streams

This example illustrates another important aspect of Flash Media

Server: there is no limit on the number of streams it can serve. Each
user of your application (or, said another way, each connection) can
publish or subscribe to an unlimited number of streams as long as
the total peak bandwidth-per-second limit is not reached.

Bandwidth considerations

Conducting calculations in your bandwidth strategy document, such

as those in the previous section, helps you identify important
bandwidth considerations for your application. However, it's worth
exploring two important considerations that are highlighted in this
last many-to-many example.

Client connection speed

Your bandwidth strategy document should help you deliver the

correct amount of information to each client. In the last many-to-
many calculation example discussed, note that even though it was a
relatively simple application with a relatively small video stream,
each client received 900 Kbps of information and published 300
Kbps. This is a lot of bandwidth—in fact, too much if your user is on
a dial-up modem or, in some cases, even on DSL. Users connecting
to this application with connections less than 400 Kbps will most
likely encounter pauses for rebuffering and suffer other poor-quality
effects.
Here are two things to keep in mind concerning client connections:
 • Save bandwidth for network overhead. A client's
bandwidth will not only need to carry data from your
application, it will also need to carry traffic for normal network
overhead. Reserve about 20% of a client's bandwidth for
overhead when calculating the amount of data to send to each
client.
• Some connections do not have the same upload and
download speed. If your application requires interaction
from the client (e.g., sending webcam video), make sure your
application takes their upload limitations into account.

You can find good online tools for testing upload and download
connection speeds. One useful test is at the Broadband Tests and
Tools page from BroadbandReports.com.

Application design matters

In the previous example, you estimated that you would be able to

add 500 total simultaneous participants to one server (125 rooms
with four people each). What if you were to change the design of the
application and, instead of allowing four people to connect to one
conference room, you allowed only two people to connect to a
particular room? Or you only have one big conference room and
everyone connects?

Example 2a: Many rooms, few people

In the scenario where you have many rooms but limit each room to
only two participants, the server bandwidth drops to 1.2 Mbps per
room:
1.2 Mbps = (2 × 2) × 300 Kbps
You can now accommodate 1000 total simultaneous participants
across 500 rooms on one server. Note also that the required client
bandwidth drops to 300 Kbps upstream and downstream, which
opens up the app to more possible users. It's still not a good
application for dial-up users, but most DSL users should now be able
to use this application.

Example 2b: Many more people in a room

These examples illustrate that the design of the application plays a

very important role in bandwidth utilization and, ultimately, in the
user experience.

Where to go from here

By now you should have a good idea of how to calculate the server
bandwidth requirements for your application. What if your estimates
require the server to serve up 800 Mbps of audio/video? Is it realistic
to push this much bandwidth on one physical server machine? Two
servers? Three servers?
Besides knowing the server bandwidth requirements, you should
also have the information you need to estimate the bandwidth
utilization of your application and the appropriate Flash Media
Server licenses you will need—and some ballpark information about
when you can expect to start thinking about adding another server
as your traffic grows.
The last but most important piece of advice is to be sure that you
thoroughly test your application yourself. Ultimately the only way to
know for sure how what type of server resources your application
will take is to test it in real-world conditions.

About the author

This content was authored by Adobe Systems, Inc.