OSH videos are up...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Let me know if you'd like me to mirror a few of these for you, Jay - I
have tons of fast bandwidth on my server.

Forgive my ignorance -- how does that work?

Mirrors can work in a variety of ways, but most common is simply to provide
an alternate link for the hosted videos (or in this case, it may be easier
to just host an entire alternate video page, so that no one has to go
through and insert new links for each video).

There's nothing really special about it...it's just a different place that
users can go if downloads are slow on the primary source.

Pete

Forgive my ignorance -- how does that work?

Mirrors can work in a variety of ways, but most common is simply to provide
an alternate link for the hosted videos (or in this case, it may be easier
to just host an entire alternate video page, so that no one has to go
through and insert new links for each video).

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?

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?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 19 Aug 2006 05:51:29 -0700, Jay Honeck wrote:

(mirroring content on webservers)

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?

you can do it that way, yes.
you can also distribute the content around the globe and let a script
either decide which server to use or round robin through your servers for
access to downloads.

or you pay akamai for the service :-)

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?

yes. there is a way, but only works if the mirror uses software like rsync:
http://everythinglinux.org/rsync/
but then still you have the user to make the decision.
example:
main server: www.foo.bar
mirror in europe: www.eu.foo.bar
mirror in uk: www.uk.foo.bar
another mirror: www.example.com/foo (where the foo directory is the root
directory for the mirrored content)

on the main page you give your visitors a choice of servers, or you use
urlrewriting in a .htaccess file and decide. :-)
example: http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html

there might be a way to automatically distribute the same content to more
than 1 server from your client.

hth, #m
--
Did you ever realize how much text fits in eighty columns? If you now consider
that a signature usually consists of up to four lines, this gives you enough
space to spread a tremendous amount of information with your messages. So seize
this opportunity and don't waste your signature with bull**** nobody will read.

"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

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.

You'll get no where with me, Pete, acting like my wife...

;-)

Thanks for your help understanding this. I assume that this will be a
short-term spike in interest (it's already running faster), but you
just never know.

This whole thing is so accidental, it's funny. Today is our 4-year
anniversary of opening the hotel, and it's worked out better than we
had a right to expect. The stupid video page (originally just an aid
to navigation for our fly-in guests, with a couple of videos of us
flying into Iowa City) has taken on such a life of its own, it could
easily become a stand-alone business.

I'm trying to waste as little time and money on it as possible, but
that's hard to do when you receive an average of 200 mb worth of video
contributions each day, from all 'round the world.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Peter Duniho wrote:

Mirrors can work in a variety of ways, but most common is simply to provide
an alternate link for the hosted videos (or in this case, it may be easier
to just host an entire alternate video page, so that no one has to go
through and insert new links for each video).

That's about it, Jay. Let me know if that's something your into - I
can put together a basic HTML page with simple links to the videos using
my own webspace..or I could mirror your exact html as long as you could
FTP me the videos.

Then you could just put a link on your site pointing there...aka "If the
site is slow, try this mirror" situation.

--
Mark
Courtice Ontario Canada
http://www.oshawapilot.ca

That's about it, Jay. Let me know if that's something your into - I
can put together a basic HTML page with simple links to the videos using
my own webspace..or I could mirror your exact html as long as you could
FTP me the videos.

Then you could just put a link on your site pointing there...aka "If the
site is slow, try this mirror" situation.

Well, we haven't received an on-line reservation from our site in a
week. I suspect folks are just tired of it taking so long, and moving
on.

Let's wait a week, and see how it goes. If this sudden burst of traffic
goes away, we'll leave things as-is. If the site continues to run like
a snail, I may be emailing you!

Thanks again.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

Well, we haven't received an on-line reservation from our site in a
week. I suspect folks are just tired of it taking so long, and moving
on.

Perhaps a reason to separate the online booking portion of your site
from the videos portion.

You wouldn't want to loose a reservation because guys like me are
mooching your bandwidth watching videos.. :-)

--
Mark
Courtice Ontario Canada
http://www.oshawapilot.ca