Network Delivery Mechanisms - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 344

Moving content around a network causes some significant problems with saturation.
One user can move a DV file on a 100-Base/T Ethernet without much hindrance. Possibly
two users can move files at the same time. Allowing more users than that will reduce the
network throughput and the sessions will be compromised. Using Ethernet switches only
provides limited help because the files are very likely to be pulled off the same storage
medium. Therefore, the network connection for the server that supports it will be satu-
rated. Providing Gigabit Ethernet connections to every desk is an unsatisfactory solution
because it just defers the saturation until the team grows bigger. When very large numbers
of people are operating on shared video storage you have to consider deploying fiber-
channel connections and a storage area network (SAN).

19.12 Streaming It Out

While we can deliver content across a network in the form of a downloadable file, a lot of
service offerings are more attractive when deployed as a stream. It is a commonly held
misconception that streaming content cannot be recorded. This is a silly assumption
because it is just one software application talking to another.
As a server application, your system may think it is talking to a client player or Web
page plug-in but you only have the evidence provided by that player to indicate that this
is the case. How do you know the client isn't lying to your server and is in fact recording
the whole stream for playback later? Someone who wants to record your stream and redis-
tribute it for their own profit might very well do this and you would never know.
It's a mystery why people should imagine that recording a stream is difficult when
that's exactly what a digital video recorder does. Let's examine steaming a bit more in the
next chapter and find out a bit more about it.