"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
So, if I'm reading this right, the mirror is basically another server.
From what you say, I gather that it would require uploading to both
servers each time I updated the page?

At some point, yes...the content needs to somehow get to the mirror.

Is there any way around that? The name "mirror" implies (to me,
anyway) that there must be a way to make a server into a "repeater" of
another server?

There is. It's just that most people don't implement them that way when
it's just a matter of a sudden spike in traffic. Since computers are
involved, it is possible to automate pretty much as much of the process as
you'd like. In the biggest, highest-traffic situations all of this is
completely transparent to the end-user. However, if you expect this load to
be transient it may not be worth the trouble to set something like that up.

If you think this kind of load will exist long-term, you may well want to
permanently move the video hosting elsewhere, preferably to a server that
won't need mirroring. There are lots of possible solutions...one you might
want to consider is just letting YouTube host the videos. They allow
embedding in your own web pages, as long as you provide some minimal linking
back to the YouTube web site. One downside is that all the videos wind up
being transcoded into the 320x200 format that YouTube serves up, but I think
most of your videos are low-res anyway so that's probably not a big deal
(and any that are the correct format already probably won't have to be
transcoded). The transcoding happens on YouTube's end, so that's not really
something you need to worry about, except from a quality point of view.

Another downside is that you have to have Macromedia Flash installed to see
YouTube videos, which is kind of a silly requirement given that most
computers already have working media players installed and could play a
variety of video types natively. However, some people might actually see
this as a benefit, since it's used to embed the video in a web page,
simplifying the viewing process somewhat. Most people have Flash installed
anyway, even if they don't like it, because it's so ubiquitous. But you
will wind up leaving some folks out, if you take this route (or you could
provide a non-Flash link for those without Flash...even if there's a few
people left you need to host for, moving the bulk of the traffic to YouTube
or similar could solve the bandwidth issue).

It seems to me that the first thing you need to do is figure out what role
this video page of yours plays in your overall plan. If it's truly just a
community service and you don't intend to get into the big-time video
hosting business, it might be better to just throttle the video hosting to
make sure it doesn't eat up bandwidth and server processing for the other
stuff (like your hotel pages). The interest will die down soon anyway, and
you'll still be serving more people than you ever had before.

If you intend for the video page to serve as an attractor for hotel
business, and you're hoping to redirect as much traffic as possible from the
video page over to the rest of the hotel web site, then you probably want to
set up something more robust. But in that case, your video page is part of
the hotel marketing, and can probably be deducted from your hotel income for
tax purposes (assuming you have net income that needs reducing in the first
place ). It will cost you a little more, but a) you won't wind up paying
the full bill (Uncle Sam will pick up part) and b) if it's really an
effective and useful marketing strategy, one hopes it will contribute to the
hotel bottom line in a way that justifies the expense.

Until you understand why it is you host these videos, I don't think you can
make a rational decision about how to host them.

Pete