If you are using Dolphin to start a website, chances are, one of the things that impressed you was the Ray video chat. I like it too. If it weren't for Ray video chat, I would not be using this script.
You have probably already figured out that the free Boonex RMS (rms.boonex.com), just doesn't work. With so many people trying to use rms.boonex.com at the same time, it's no surprise why it doesn't work.
The solutions are to either set up your own RMS server, which you cannot do on a shared server. RMS needs a dedicated server. If you need a dedicated server, plan on spending about $160 minimum. The second solution, is to purchase third party RMS hosting. You can purchase RMS hosting starting at $5 per month and that will get you 50 GB of total bandwidth, which I assume has the same meaning as 50GB of data transfer. 50GB bandwidth might sound impressive at first, and for standard web sites it is, but for anything involving streaming media, it really isn't much. Of course, for $5 a month, you shouldn't expect much. Just don't have overly high expectations for what you can do with a mere 50GB of transfer in streaming media applications.
I've done a few basic calculations, so anybody that decides to use third party RMS, will have a better idea of what they can actually expect for their money in a real world application.
1. FLV streaming media with a resolution of 640 x 480, 24FPS, Medium audio quality @ 22,050 Hz ---- will need a streaming data rate of approximately 1063000 Bps (Bits Per Second)
2. Each connection that either delivers or receives video in the above format will add to the total Bps used.
3. At a data rate of 1063000 Bps, a single connection will need 478 megabytes per hour of transfer.
4. At a data rate of 478 megabytes per hour, your 50 gigabytes of total bandwidth will be used up in approximately 105 hours. If you distribute that 105 hours over a 30 day period, a single connection that were connected for 210 minutes each day would use up the 50GB bandwidth.
5. Since a single connection is useless (It would mean somebody is transmitting video, but no one's watching), let's look at the resources used by multiple connections. For this analysis to make any sense, you need people transmitting, and people watching. Using the streaming video specification defined in item 1 above, if one person were transmitting, and one was listening, they could do that for 105 minutes each day. This is a total time for the 24 hour period. For 50GB of bandwidth, let's just say that you'll have a total of 210 Connection/minutes per day total, to be distributed between all the users active in video chat. If every day, you have 5 people that transmit a web cam signal, and 5 others that watch that web cam signal, that's a total of 10 connections and they will each have 21 minutes of video chat time to use. please note that a user that is both transmitting a signal, and also watching a signal, counts for 2 connections... an upstream connection, and a downstream connection. In other words, if 2 people were using video IM, that would be 4 connections.... each IM user would be using an upstream connection and a downstream connection.
If you had 3 pairs of people using video chat, each pair would have 17.5 minutes per day of video chat available. Anything longer than that.... and you need more RMS bandwidth. Of course, this entire analysis, uses an FLV format of 640 x 480 @ 24 FPS which is pretty good video setting for a web cam.
If your users are all connected with a web cams that transmits video @ 320 x 240, 12 FPS, with medium quality audio, that will use a lot less bandwidth..... 141,000 Bps per connection, to be exact. With the lower quality of video, which is about as low quality as web cams get, you can expect about 7.5 times more video chatting time before you use up your 50GB bandwidth. This analysis uses very specific examples to perform the calculations and is not meant to be any type of definitive guide. The bottom line is, with 50GB of RMS bandwidth, you can expect between 3 to 21 hours of video chatting time per day to be shared by your entire user base. The total chatting time available to your users will depend largely on the resolution of transmitted video. So... that 50GB of RMS bandwidth that you purchased for $5 won't go very far, but you shouldn't expect it to for that price. It is certainly worth the small, $5 price, just don't complain to your RMS hosting provider, when you discover that 50GB of bandwidth won't handle a moderately busy video chat room. If you have a rapidly growing community, and video chat it catching on, be ready to make the jump to a dedicated server with RMS and the $160/month bill that comes with it. You won't need to do any complex analysis as to when it is time to make the move.... your users will let you know.
