I need a new podcast host

[EEVblog]

It's probably time I stopped using the cheap arse hosts for the podcast.
Looking at LibSyn who we use for the AmpHour show who are excellent and fast.
But their biggest plan at $75/month seems it would barely be enough at 1500MB.
For example, in the last 30 days I produced 15 episodes (9 hours 21 minutes worth of material) with a total length of almost 2GB in file size at 640x360.
I'll have to talk with LibSyn and see what they can do, but are there any other options I should consider?

And before everyone simply screams "Amazon S3" etc, do the math on the amount of outbound bandwidth required. That's 2TB of data every month for every 1000 viewers. I have at least 3500 regular podcast viewers. So we are talking towards the 10TB/month figure.

[nctnico]

How about using torrents? That way you are using a peer-to-peer network to distribute the files at zero costs for you. Just offering this as an option may save you a serious amount of bandwidth (and costs).

[BartManInNZ]

What about a CDN like Limelight? http://www.limelight.com/services/orchestrate-video/video-platform-free-trial/ I guess it would cost similar to Amazon... not sure about that though.

[EEVblog]

How about using torrents? That way you are using a peer-to-peer network to distribute the files at zero costs for you. Just offering this as an option may save you a serious amount of bandwidth (and costs).

I already do, but ultimate the RSS feed must link to real file somewhere, and the majority will use that. Less than 50 people have chosen the torrent option.

[BartManInNZ]

https://www.frontrangehosting.com/hb/index.php/cart/cloud-servers/
10TB for $190USD per month, I use a $2/month hosting plan and $1/month VPS but not to the extent you'd would.

[mariush]

Just get a dedicated server with 100mbps unmetered bandwidth:

http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/100mbps-unmetered-servers

http://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/sp_16g.xml

about 65$ a month for 100 mbps unmetered = ~ 30 TB a month

and you just ask your friend to set up a basic web server on it to serve files from.





 

[EEVblog]

Just get a dedicated server with 100mbps unmetered bandwidth:
about 65$ a month for 100 mbps unmetered = ~ 30 TB a month
and you just ask your friend to set up a basic web server on it to serve files from.

Sure, can do that, but one problem is that it's not a CDN, and is likely not optimised for massive user video streaming. What happens when 1000 people (or more) try to download the latest episode at once?
That's one advantage of a purpose designed CDN solution like Libsyn

[Telequipment]

Don't ya just love technology , it will screw us all one day

[mariush]

Just get a dedicated server with 100mbps unmetered bandwidth:
about 65$ a month for 100 mbps unmetered = ~ 30 TB a month
and you just ask your friend to set up a basic web server on it to serve files from.

Sure, can do that, but one problem is that it's not a CDN, and is likely not optimised for massive user video streaming. What happens when 1000 people (or more) try to download the latest episode at once?
That's one advantage of a purpose designed CDN solution like Libsyn

I will agree with you, a single dedicated server on a 100 mbps port will not handle beautifully 1000 people downloading at the same time. If 1000 will download at the same time, you'll get about 80-90 mbps split between 1000 users, obviously... each will download at 20-50 KB/s

You just have to ask yourself :

1. do you really think you're going to have 1000 users click on the download button at the same time? 

The RSS feeds don't push the new video to all people at same time, most have the rss set to refresh once every 10-20 minutes or so, they don't all click on the download link the moment the update pops in the feed etc ... you'll probably have 1000 people spread out within about 20-30 minutes to an hour, making it much more manageable.

You could also do some tricks like using geolocation to delay the rss feed for some regions .. ex australia gets the rss post instantly, us gets it 10 minutes later, eu gets it 20 minutes later... this way you'll spread those 1000 users a bit... who cares when in the day user is notified of the video?
 
2. do you think the large majority of users will care whether the download speed is 5 MB/s or 100-200 KB/s? 

A video is maybe 50-100 MB on average.. even at 100KB/s that video will download in 5-10 minutes which isn't that much. A lot of people have slow connections anyway so they won't really be bothered by the slow speed.

Youtube encodes videos at 360p and 480p at about 600-800 kbps.. that's about 80-110KB/s. Basically you could set rules in the web server to limit each user to about 150 KB/s maximum speed and you'd guarantee nobody has issues even if he/she streams the video directly from your server without downloading it in advance.

The apache server has filters already that you could configure for example to allow a burst of a few MB when user starts downloading the file and then if the server serves lots of users it can throttle down the connection to 100-150KB or more to keep everyone's download at a reasonable speed - this assures that if the person tries to stream the video directly he/she has a big chunk initially to watch.

Anyway... even if you want to think in advance, there are offers for dedicated servers with 1 gbps ports that aren't so expensive

In fact I plan to upgrade one of my servers at Swiftway to one of their latest offers published here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1280239&highlight=swift

INTEL Xeon E3-1240 4 Core / 8 Threads

    RAM: 16GB DDR3 internal memory
    HDD: 2 x 128GB SSD or 2x WD 1TB 3.5 7200rpm 64MB SATA
    RAID: Optional - see optional upgrades for details
    Bandwidth: 1 Gbps port with 10TB monthly bandwidth package
    IPMI 2.0 with Integrated KVM/IP with remote media support
    Datacenter location: Netherlands or Chicago, USA

105$ for server with 1 gbps port with 10 TB included, 30$ for each additional chunk of 10 TB you add to the server.

Leaseweb offers something a bit more expensive and with lower performance hardware but with 100 TB of bandwidth at about 115$ and up : http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/100-tb-servers
Basically the catch is that it's a "volume network", meaning you may get up to 300mbps-800mbps depending on how loaded the network segment is, and each connection will average at about 400 KB/s to 2-3 MB/s depending where the user is ... their "premium" network can do even 10-30MB/s download speeds.

CDN is much more expensive than such offers because they're not really designed for what you want to do... a CDN's idea is to have the files you serve cached/spread out on various servers around the world and when user clicks on download, he gets the file from a file closer to him/her.

CDN is great to store javascript files, website images, logos, ads etc to keep a website responsive and fast... for videos.... use a cdn to serve a video ad so user won't feel like skipping it because it loads slowly... but the eevblog videos, I don't think speed matters that much.

I doubt these video downloads are that time sensitive and that viewers care so much about speed that you'd have to resort to such premium solution like a CDN.

[BurtyB]

Have you thought of download mirror sites?

I'd be happy to add your downloads to the list of projects I provide mirrors for (official php.net/CPAN/etc.) and I'm sure others probably would too.

Chris.

[EEVblog]

I will agree with you, a single dedicated server on a 100 mbps port will not handle beautifully 1000 people downloading at the same time. If 1000 will download at the same time, you'll get about 80-90 mbps split between 1000 users, obviously... each will download at 20-50 KB/s

That's still pretty slow.

1. do you really think you're going to have 1000 users click on the download button at the same time? 

Yes. And there is also the continuous load of previous episodes.

2. do you think the large majority of users will care whether the download speed is 5 MB/s or 100-200 KB/s? 

Quicker is always better.
I need to think of growth.
My limited numbers on the podcast at the moment are very likely because the performance sucks.

A video is maybe 50-100 MB on average.. even at 100KB/s that video will download in 5-10 minutes which isn't that much. A lot of people have slow connections anyway so they won't really be bothered by the slow speed.

The opposition leader in our country said something similar akin this in trying to support copper vs fibre. It's Bill Gates 640KB is enough for everyone all over again.

Youtube encodes videos at 360p and 480p at about 600-800 kbps.. that's about 80-110KB/s. Basically you could set rules in the web server to limit each user to about 150 KB/s maximum speed and you'd guarantee nobody has issues even if he/she streams the video directly from your server without downloading it in advance.

I don't want to rate limit people.

CDN is much more expensive than such offers because they're not really designed for what you want to do... a CDN's idea is to have the files you serve cached/spread out on various servers around the world and when user clicks on download, he gets the file from a file closer to him/her.

Umm, bingo!
That's what you want, the fastest possible for everyone. There is no way one dedicated box in one place on the planet will beat a distributed CDN.
That is why companies like LibSyn exist that use CDN's specifically for streaming podcasts.

but the eevblog videos, I don't think speed matters that much.

Speed is everything, it made a huge difference to our AmpHour show switching to LibSyn, and that's a lousy 30MB audio file.

[EEVblog]

Have you thought of download mirror sites?

I don't think mirrors work for RSS feeds? They need a fixed file location pointer.

[mariush]

Dave, it's always nice to have fast speeds but I was thinking of "good enough" for small amount of money.

As you can see my suggestions hovered around 100-120$ for up to 100 TB of transferred data at varying speeds and quality levels.  CDN would get you more reliable speeds but at less overall bandwidth and higher price - if you can afford it go for it.

As for your question regarding rss feed and download mirrors .. you can easily set up a script which chooses automatically a download mirror for the user ...

For example you can have

eevblog.com/podcasts/download.php?file=100 or
eevblog.com/podcasts/download.php?file=EEVblog491-Nintendo64teardown-640x360.m4v

 ... and the script will automatically redirect browsers to one of the mirrors you previously set in the script. If you want I can write you such script in a couple of minutes.

[BurtyB]

Have you thought of download mirror sites?

I don't think mirrors work for RSS feeds? They need a fixed file location pointer.

At the fixed location a fairly simple redirect script using the MaxMind GeoLite database,  a list of mirrors with the areas served etc. should help offload a good chunk of traffic.

[steve1515]

How about BitGravity? It's what Revision3 uses for their video files. I couldn't find a price though, so you'll probably have to request a quote from them.

http://www.bitgravity.com/products/bg_video_delivery.html

EDIT: After a little more looking... Here's a list of a few CDNs: http://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/

[Rasz]

Wait, why is this linked from "one of my webpages was haxored"?  are you blaming "cheap arse hosts" for garbahe unsecure php code you ran on calcwatch site?
btw was it php? how was the site hacked? Last time I looked at calcwatch it  was some static page with few pictures - something that should be 100% secure.

[mariush]

A good host would not disable ALL websites hosted on the account, but only the affected domain and give you time to fix it before going all paranoid.

For example, years ago a friend of mine with a Dreamhost shared hosting account upgraded an image gallery script that turned out to be a cpu hog.  The admins simply went in an added a php.ini in that folder which blocked the script from being processed, then notified the user.

[alm]

If the files for all websites are accessible from the same account, then anyone with access to one of those sites could also make changes to the other sites. I think erring on the safe side is fair for a host, especially a cheap one. The burden is on the user to maintain a secure website, not on the host to be tolerant towards hacked accounts.

[Smokey]

Funny, based on the "I need a new podcast host" I thought you were getting rid of Chris for a second.  I haven't been keeping up to date with amp hours but I was about to check out the last one to see if you got into a fight or something

[jancumps]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?
Maybe you can start a cooperative with one of them to share the costs for a performant service?

[Griffin]

Hi Dave

I have 2 HP DL380 servers idling in two of the data cabinets I maintain. Bandwidth not that much since we are in South Africa but I can offer them up for free to keep any part of the EEVblog going. Pop me a mail and we can talk specs if you have time.

[Rasz]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

I agree with alm - its users fault he used garbage hackable code on his account. Hosting stuff is not the same as posting updates on bookface.

[baljemmett]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

Except Dave does host video files, hence the discussion about bandwidth and transfer caps...

[jancumps]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

Except Dave does host video files, hence the discussion about bandwidth and transfer caps...

Yes, I thought that this was the specific issue.

[Rasz]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

Except Dave does host video files, hence the discussion about bandwidth and transfer caps...

Does he? Where?