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• 03-10-2008, 11:31 AM

  roberthu Joined on 03-10-2008, 11:23 AM Posts 9

  Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Hi,  I have a customer evaluating Media Service proxy function of Windows Server 2008. While testing, we found a strange problem of media service proxy and wrapper playlist.  In the setup, we have a Windows Server 2008 media service with a wrapper playlist contains a advertisement video and a live stream. We setup another media service works as reverse proxy. When first user watching, it will see advertisement video then live stream. While first user watching the live stream, the second user connects to reverse proxy will only see live stream, the adverisement video will not show up.  If the first user and second user connect directly to media service, both of them will see advisement video and live stream.  Is it by design that the wrapper playlist will not work with media service proxy? Or is there any way to make the wrapper playlist work with media service proxy? Please help.  Thanks, Robert Hu

  Tags: mediawindows media services

• 03-10-2008, 3:34 PM

  In reply to

  vsood Joined on 07-12-2007, 1:16 AM Redmond Posts 42

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Hi Robert Currently, the server-side playlists don't work with shipped cache proxy plug-in. To make that work for you you will need to write your own plug-in. You can get more information on how to cache server side playlists with WMS here -http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms739745(VS.85).aspx. The wrapper playlists is actually one way of using the server side playlist. Regards, Vishal

  Tags: mediawindows media services

• 03-10-2008, 4:02 PM

  In reply to

  vsood Joined on 07-12-2007, 1:16 AM Redmond Posts 42

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Meanwhile, you can solve this particular problem by disabling stream-splitting on the origin server. This means you will have individual connections for all the client connections but reverse proxy would work. Do you want to give that a try? The way to disable stream splitting on origin server broadcast publishing point is to go to properties -> go to general and disable the "Enable stream splitting" property. Then the clients will see the Ad. Note - you will see this property only for broadcast publishing points. Regards Vishal

  Tags: mediawindows media services

• 03-12-2008, 4:25 AM

  In reply to

  roberthu Joined on 03-10-2008, 11:23 AM Posts 9

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Yes, wrapper playlist works after disabling stream splitting. Thank you very much.  This leads to another question: How does the extra connection impact server performance and scalability? We are planning a 100k concurrent connection media server farm and try to use Windows Server 2008 media service proxy to distribute load to data center near customers. What does the extra connection affect system performnce? We'll do a stress test to find out but would like to know it from design persepctive.

  Tags: mediawindows media services

• 03-13-2008, 12:58 AM

  In reply to

  vsood Joined on 07-12-2007, 1:16 AM Redmond Posts 42

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Great to hear that :) Thanks for trying it out. The best way to do this would be to cache the ad and split the live stream within a playlist. However, cache proxy plugin does not support server side playlists so you cannot use either the stream splitting or caching in this case. The perf impact would be that there will be more than one connection within the network and the network may saturate faster. With splitting, we could have saved the intra network bandwidth. The real scale will depend on the network capacity of the farm. I would not worry too much about CPU since machines are pretty beefy especially if we use 64 bit. Having said that, I would be eager to hear how the stress tests go.

  Tags: mediawindows media services

• 05-02-2008, 4:36 AM

  In reply to

  roberthu Joined on 03-10-2008, 11:23 AM Posts 9

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact I have good new and bad news: Good news is media service on Windows Sever 2008 performs 50% better than Windows 2003 with same hardware. We test with live streaming of 600kbps, 1500 concurrent users on Windows 2008 runs very smooth while 1000 concurrent users on Windows 2003 runs out all ram and start to stall.  Bad news is disable stream splitting, the bandwidth is not saved for multiple connection through proxy. So the scalbility is not very good and backend server can not be protected by cache/proxy. Gotta to find out other way for our setting.  It will be nice if someone can shad some light about how to build customized cache/proxy plug-in to enable sending out a playlist for every new connetion first, or is it possible to use Authentication/Authorization plug-in to send out a playlist for every new connection? Any suggestion will be very appreciated.  - Robert Hu

  Tags: windows media services

• 05-02-2008, 12:22 PM

  In reply to

  vsood Joined on 07-12-2007, 1:16 AM Redmond Posts 42	Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Hi Robert, This is great news. Are you using 32 bit servers? If you use 64 bit servers, you can get even better scalability. For building a cache proxy plug-in by yourself, a  great starting point is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms741639(VS.85).aspx Regards Vishal
  	Tags: windows media services

• 05-04-2008, 12:06 AM

  In reply to

  roberthu Joined on 03-10-2008, 11:23 AM Posts 9	Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact They use 64bit Windows Server 2008 but the server only has 2G ram installed. In server 2008, the network thgouthput is almost 950mbps. So they need to add more NIC and RAM to support more concurrent users.
  	Tags: mediawindows media services

• 05-07-2008, 5:37 PM

  In reply to

  prakashd Joined on 10-16-2007, 7:33 PM Redmond Posts 7

  Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact The server-side playlist in WMS is treated as one atomic unit so you can cache/proxy the whole playlist but not just selected entries. In this case you have an ad and live stream. 1. If stream splitting is enabled then cache/proxy server will make a single connection to origin server. That means once ad is done and live broadcast starts all succeeding client s will only see live broadcast (which is not what is desired) 2. By disabling stream splitting each client wil get the ad and live stream but then each client will result in a separate connection to the orign server. The way to solve this problem is use distribution scenario. (i.e use the cache-proxy server as a distribution server). 1. On the distribution server create a broadcast publishing point that is pointing to the live stream (or a publishing point on origin server without any wrapper playlist) 2. Create a wrapper palylist on this publishing point This will work exactly as you expect. Each client will get an ad and then live stream. One one connection from distribution server to origin server.

• 05-08-2008, 5:24 AM

  In reply to

  roberthu Joined on 03-10-2008, 11:23 AM Posts 9	Re: Media service proxy and wrapper playlist Reply Contact Hi prakashd, Your suggestion is what we use today. Use distribution scenario at edge server. But it need to setup when lots of live publishing point will be created and removed. If cache/proxy plug-in can work with server-side playlist, the cache/proxy farm at the edge will support all publishing points on the backend.
  	Tags: mediawindows media services