Speed Test

I saw someone else post thier SpeedTest.Net results and I thought is was cool. Here are the numbers from our Internet Pipe. We have some issues with our current firewall that slow things down a little, but we will resolve that this year with our new one!




What's your speed?

Real Time Flash Stream

I am very excited. This wednesday, we are going to have a test version of a new stream available for the church. I have been experimenting with getting RealTime Flash Encoding to work. Today I finally got a setup that seems to be working. This is very exciting because it would create a very cool way to embed video into the website that would truly be cross platform. Flash runs on almost everything.

Tools that I am using:
- Adobe Flash Media Encoder - Running on a Dual Core Computer with 2048MB of RAM and an Osprey 210 Video Capture Board.
- Flash Media Player - a free download of a configurable embeddable flash player (including full screen support ***Requires Flash 9 ***) This player is available for free from http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Flash_Media_Player. At the time of this post, the most current version was 3.8.

Server Side
- Windows 2003 Server / IIS / Flash Media Server 2.0 (We have sunk the $$$ into the real Flash Server, but I have been looking at Red 5 lately, as an open source alternative.)

I will post a link prior to Wednesday Night so anyone who wants to check it out can.

Oh by the way...This flash player works full screen...Totally Awesome!

Central Florida CITRT Group

I would like to extend a warm welcome to anyone would like to become part of the Central Florida CITRT group. I would like to see this group get started since there are a lot of churches in the Central Florida Area. Calvary Melbourne is willing to host the sessions of the group, but it would probably be better if we could find a Church in the Orlando area willing to host some of the meetings. If anyone is interested, either drop me a comment, or send me an email.

The NeXT CITRT Get Together

I don't know if people are already starting to offer a location for the next Church IT Round Table large group get together, but I would like to put our Church on the table as a possible location. I have already discussed the idea with our Church Administrator, and he is totally open to our church hosting the event.

For those of you who don't know where we are, he is a google map link view:

Google Map

Usually the weather is warm all year around... I don't if everyone is thinking about switching everything into regional / local meetings only, or how things might evolve, but our campus is large enough to host just about any size event that CITRT might need to do.

I would like to start getting some of the local Florida Church IT people together and get a local group going that could meet somewhat regularly...

Infrastructure Series: Streaming Setup

At CCM we have two very different streaming systems right now. We have our regular Internet Streams, and we also have our Live Streaming Solution for our Multi-Site Church. Both work off many of the same systems, but operate very differently. Let's start with our Internet Streaming setup. Currently we have 3 encoders...2 in production, 1 in standby mode (manual, nothing fancy yet, just a spare). The encoders are all built with the following:

Hardware:
- homebuilt rackmount dual core computers
- Osprey 210 Cards
- 1 to 8 Analog Composite Video & RCA Stereo Distribution Amplifier

Software:
- Windows XP
- Osprey Drivers / Utilities
- Windows Media Encoder / Real Producer

Server Side we have an interesting mix. In the process of getting our distributed network for Multi-Site streaming in place, we ended up getting 75Mb of Internet as part of the deal. Long story with Time Warner, if anyone ever wants to know email me... On the servers we have, again a home built box with some redundancy for our Windows Media Distribution Point (Win 2k3, WMS, etc) and we have a leased server from the Planet where we run Real Server.

Currently we are running the following streams:

WMS:
- 282 Kbps (16:9 Video 360x240 Resolution)
- 30 Kbps (16:9 Video 180x120 Resolution)
- 14-20 Kbps Audio Only Stream
- 14-20 Kbps Spanish Audio Only Stream (translated on the fly)

Real:
- 250 Kbps (16:9 Video 360x240 Resolution)
- 30 Kbps (16:9 Video 180x120 Resolution)

Right now all of these streams are being done from 1 Encoder Computer. (Dell Optiplex with Core 2 Duo / 2 GB Ram) ViewCast offers a software called simulstream which allows you to fire up multiple encoders on a single computer using a single osprey card to create completely seperate streams.

Our Second Encoder computer is being used to test some higher bitrate streams. Right now I am testing the possibility of upgrading to using the Flash Media Encoder to provide a Real Time Flash Stream.

My other upgrade project is to get a Black Magic Capture board and offer a full resolution (720x480) stream.

Here is a look at our streaming setup. Our Live multisite is also diagrammed here, but I will cover that in a later article.

Infrastructure Series: Content Filtering

For content filtering we have standardized on WebSense http://www.websense.com . I have worked with Surf Control and Websense rather extensively over the last 6 months. Pound for pound Surf Control is less expensive and get’s “close” to filtering as well as WebSense, but in the end, WebSense is simply a much better product. There are obviously much less expensive solutions out there, but there aren’t too many that can keep up with our network. Websense has several little features that are really cool…

First things first – our Church environment might be a little different. We have a large atrium area where we have public internet access…Totally public. I am looking at putting a captive portal in place so we can at least splash something at folks as they come in. Additionally we have a K-8 school and those little guys need some supervision / blocking. Lastly we have a Youth Center Building where teens have free access to the Internet from 8 computers (thin clients, but that’s another story).

WebSense has been a great solution for us because:

1) It enforces Safe Search on Image Sites (images.google.com / images.yahoo.com)

2) Has a wonderfully selectable policy engine

a. Multiple policies

b. Multiple Category / List settings

3) Much faster update than Surf Control

All in all it is a fantastic product. I actually considered going with Surf Control and then I learned that they are in the process of being acquired by WebSense. So that sealed the deal, that and the fact that WebSense offered to match the Surf Control Pricing.

So that begs the question? What is everyone doing on Content Filtering?

What is the best Blog to use?

I have noticed that many people are using different solutions to accomplish blogging, so the question I have is, what is the best solution right now for blogging? Anybody have any metrics on it?