We are using GA for tracking video traffic for videos that are hosted on a proprietary front end Youtube like platform and embedded on in about 6-8 different domains in iFrames.
When comparing views for a particular video in the front end platform and in a AWS Quicksite dash board and in Google Analytics which tracks sessions instead of views we are getting wildly different results. That are far fewer sessions for the same video as there are views.
We are using an ip range of about 20 ip numbers for all playback.
Can it be that GA does not really know who each requester is, and that once a session is open, it is reused for other people requesting other videos on the same domain?
I can otherwise not explain the vast difference between views and Session numbers?
We have not yet merged to GA 4. but are using the
Hope one of you have the answer to this.
Thank you on beforehand.
ggaarde
Related
I have to realize a web app able to guarantee two main actions execution:
first one action is about allowing to a small number of users to upload ads or posts, these A users will can upload ads in the application as they will want but they will can upload photos until five megabyte overall threshold. Moreover ads total number will be approximately 10k.
Second action is about allowing to a broad public (1k users per day) to looking for and check published articles from A users, these research will can be more accurate inserting advanced filters.
I would like to know if is strictly necessary build up my app in a scalable way or if I could simply use a MVC approach?
This app will be developed using Laravel framework and it will hosted by Amazon server.
what do you recommend me to do ?
I would like to have some advices, tips and tricks to do it in the best way.
Thanks in advance
The MVC approach is fine, Laravel, or any platform, can be scaled in multiple ways. The simplest is separating the functions of DB, laravel app, cache, queue, to separate servers, and each of those pieces can be scaled separately.
There is a great online set of videos about this, https://serversforhackers.com/scaling-laravel/forge.
But unless you know you will have a large amount of traffic right away, it's better to start with a simpler structure, you will save on cost and it's not hard to scale it later. I mean, start with one server for now, then maybe separate the functions (cache, DB etc) to separate servers as you find they need to be scaled.
If you want to save a little hassle though, I do recommend Laravel Forge, and Envoyer. It makes deploying and managing servers a lot easier. Envoyer is for deployments, great to automate all that.
After many hours of research and nothing relevant coming up I decided to ask.
I am pretty new to the concept of video streaming, so please forgive me if my questions may seem elementary.
I am building a project that needs to include media streaming functionality. It should has the following options:
VOD - user uploads a file to the server, that needs to be transcoded to few MP4 files of different resolutions. For transcoding I am trying the approach using CloudTranscode (https://github.com/bfansports/CloudTranscode) deployed as a Docker image. The server should supply stream to the player with certain buffer size, so when the playback is paused we buffer for instance +5 seconds and that's it. Adaptive bitrate would be nice, however I'm not sure how this works with different players (I was thinking about using Video.JS due to high customization option, plus it's free).
Live video capturing - user visits a certain page that captures video from the webcam and sends the stream to the server for further stream distribution to clients. For most browsers WebRTC could be a good option, but iOS devices probably won't work with it, so any suggestions here would be much appreciated
Live video streaming - users visit a certain page where they can watch the stream captured from the user mentioned in point 2. Here the stream may be watched by one or many users (may be as well 1 or 10,000 users)
Cutting to the chase my questions follow:
What would be the best media server software that I can use for that purpose, having on mind high scalability (deployed as Docker container on AWS EC2), and possible huge load of both streaming and watching users, as well as multi-device/platform/browser support?
What would be the best media player for webpage that (again) would be cross-browser/platform/device, keeping in mind good integration with media server itself for purpose of adaptive resolution streaming? Also it would be nice if the player has broad customization options in matter of appearence (for instance thumbnail display when hovering the timeline).
Do you know any better solution for video transcoding than mentioned CloudTranscode, having on mind Docker setup, and some easy to use API (here some on-the-fly transcoding would be nice, so the worker wouldn't need to wait for the whole file to be uploaded)?
What happens if I use autoscalling functionality on EC2 instance, and more instances of the media server are being automatically started? Let's say we have instance 1 (I1) and instance 2 (I2). Some user started broadcasting on I1, and 1000 users are watching the stream which is the server instance's limit because it's running out of resources. Next, another couple of users are trying to view the stream, so they are being connected to I2 by AWS load balancer - how does that work with live stream? Sorry, but I am total newbie to the concept, so again - forgive me for elementary questions.
So far a was able to find a few media servers that may be relevant to my needs including:
Wowza Media Server (paid)
Red5 media server (free)
Kurento Media Server (free)
My application is written in Laravel, ergo I need some PHP integration with the media server.
Obviously free solutions are the most welcome, however I do not mind to pay as long as paid solution covers my needs.
Any input here will be much appreaciated - even partial solutions / suggestions. I'm kinda stuck here, so any suggestions that can bring me closer to the solution are very welcome!
Best regards
If anyone needs such information I ended up using Nginx Plus media server functionalities. It's capable of serving both live and VOD streams, it has out-of-the-box load balancer to switch traffic over multiple container instances and many more great features. Plus they have images to deploy directly from AWS Marketplace, and the license is paid hourly when the EC2 instance is running. Ofcourse there is free version as well, but I am really satisfied with Nginx Plus support.
Capturing live stream from user I've done using getUserMedia() in JS. Still having minor glitches, but I will get it to work (problems are related with WebM chunks that MediaRecorder API spits out, but I'm almost done here using some Python piece of code modifying each chunk on server side).
If anyone needs help I will be happy to help.
Recently I have been looking into the development of social networks and I often find references to pump.io. There is however very limited information available on what pump.io actually is. The official website says nothing more than: "It's a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network." I found some more information on this website (http://slid.es/evanp/understanding-pumpio/fullscreen#/) but that still doesn't say a lot to me.
Could someone please provide an elaborate discussion on what pump.io actually is (and does) to someone who does not know anything about (activity) stream servers? Maybe the better question is: "What is an activity stream server?"
Yeah, the term is one a lot of people are unfamiliar with and it makes a couple of distinctions that aren't immediately obvious even if you use and post to a pump.io site.
pump.io, as it is distributed, is really two programs with different sets of functions. One is the Activity Stream Server and the other is the Web Client.
At the risk of being pedantic, let me define each of the words. I know you know what the words mean, but I hope the specific contexts/usage will help:
Server: a program which distributes information (usually) across a
network.
Stream: a (usually) chronological series of some sorts of pieces of information.
Activity: a description or depiction of something someone is doing.
The Activity Stream Server is a program which distributes (server) a chronological series (stream) of posts about stuff people do (activities).
The distinction is important because the website part of a pump.io website is a client for the pump server—essentially no different from a desktop or smartphone pump.io client. It listens to the pump's stream of posts and sends new posts to the pump using the same API and data formats that standalone applications—or other pumps—do.
You could actually totally decouple the Web Client and have a fully-functioning pump.io instance without any website. Users on other pump sites could see your posts and you could see theirs, and you could comment back and forth. It would make no difference.
ActivityStream is a JSON-based data format to describe "activities". The specification of ActivityStream 2.0 can be found at https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/ and the vocabulary of activities at https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/. To get the feeling of how the data format looks like you can have a look at the few examples at https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/#examples. More examples can be found throughout the two specifications.
pump.io is an activity stream server that does most of what people
really want a social network server to do.
That's a pretty packed sentence, I understand, but I can try to unwind
it a little.
"Activities" are the things we do in our on-line or off-line
life—waking up in the morning, going for a run, tasting a beer,
uploading a photo, adding a friend, eating a burrito, joining a group,
liking a blog post.
pump.io uses a simple JSON format to represent all these kinds of
activities and many more. It organizes activities into streams—time
ordered lists of activities, with the newest first. Most streams are
organized by theme, like: all the things that my friends did, or all
the things that I did, or all the things anyone has done to this
picture.
Programmers use a simple API to connect to a pump.io server and add
new activities. pump.io automatically organizes the activities into
streams and makes sure the activities get to the people who are
interested in them.
And, really, that's what we want from a social network
Behrenshausen, B. (2013). 'Interview with Evan Prodromou, lead developer of pump.io'. Retrieved from: https://opensource.com/life/13/7/pump-io
If you peer a few centimeters down the page on the official website, you'll see:
What's it for? I post something and my followers see it. That's the
rough idea behind the pump.
There's an API defined in the API.md file. It uses activitystrea.ms
JSON as the main data and command format.
You can post almost anything that can be represented with activity
streams -- short or long text, bookmarks, images, video, audio,
events, geo checkins. You can follow friends, create lists of people,
and so on.
The software is useful for at least these scenarios:
Mobile-first social networking
Activity stream functionality for an existing app
Experimenting with social software
Those last 3 items hopefully answer your question.
Currently, you can:
install the nodejs-based pump.io server
(or) sign up for an account on a public service
post notes and pictures with configurable permissions
log in to web and client applications using your webfinger ID
I have a website centered around an online chat application where each user can have up to several hundred contacts. Each contact has there own profile image. I want to make it so that the contact's profile image is loaded next to there name. However, having the user download 100+ images every time they load the site seems intensive (Studies have shown that as much as 40% of users don't utilize there cache). Each image is around 60x60 pixels in dimension.
When I search on google or sign on to facebook, dozens of images are served nearly instantaneously. Beyond just having fast servers and a good connection, what are the optimal methods for delivering so many images to the user?
Possible approaches I have come up with are:
Storing each user's profile image in a database, constructing one image in a php file, than having the user download that, then using css to display each profile image. However, this seems extremely intense on the server and referencing such a large file so many times might take a toll on the user's browser.
Using nginx rather than apache to server the images (nginx generally works better to server static content such as this). However, this seems more like an optimization to a solution, rather than a solution in itself.
I am also aware that data can be delivered across persistent http connections so multiple requests do not have to be made to the server for multiple files. However, exactly how many files can be delivered across one persistent connection. Would this persistent model mean that just having the images load as separate files would not necessarily be a bad idea?
Any suggestions, solutions, and/or notes on personal experiences with relevant matters would be greatly appreciated. Scalability is extremely important here, as well as cross-browser support (IE7+, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
EDIT: I AM NOT USING JQUERY.
Here's a jquery plugin that delays loading images until they're actually needed (i.e., only loads images "above the fold".)
http://www.appelsiini.net/2007/9/lazy-load-images-jquery-plugin
An alternative may be to use Flash to display just the images. The advantage is Flash is a much stronger local cache that you have programm
Just wondering: Would it be acceptable to start some simple Ajax instant messaging (web-based) for a large social network service (considering thousands of registered users)? I am new to this, so I'm just wondering. What if to check for a new message every two or three seconds?
Edited: Could a plain shared server handle so many requests every so often? And yes, I would roll my own program.
There're many web im client based on standard XMPP protocol. You could try iJab or JWChat.
It doesn't make sense to write your own, unless you have some unique requirements, but whether the server can handle this largely depends on the server language and webserver setup, as to how well it scales.
You will need to do some heavy load testing, to ensure that the high load that is expected will work, as your traffic will be very heavy. For example, if your social networking site is soccer related, then during the World Cup you may expect to see more traffic than Wed mornings.
If you asked the question with:
I want to use language X.
I want to use webserver Y.
I am using this framework for the
webservice.
I would like to accept voice
recordings and webcam recordings
over IM, as well as text.
How well will this scale on my one 1GHz server?
If you manage to make a peer-to-peer (P2P) browser-embedded chat, than even a shared hosting will do for dozens of thousands of simultaneous users :) :)