Sawdust session, again

[dusty]

was a bust. I was really up for this. I spent nearly two hours trying to make my computer work before I decided it wasn't something I could fix. Stubborn or stupid?

Next time will be better.

[Nick]

First of all, I want to thank those of you who tried to attend this Satuday's (September 15, 2007) Sawdust Session for being so decent and understanding about our failure to deliver. It was extremely embarrasing for me, and I do appreciate your interest and your understanding. The fact that we unintentionally wasted your good time and you have refrained from complaining about it and making us feel worse is much appreciated

Because you did invest some time, I feel I owe you an explaination. This is all I know at this juncture:

Drew and I came in early on Saturday morning to set up the web shop. Drew turned on the computers and pinged a service called "Speakeasy." This company sends a signal to several servers across America, these servers ping our encoding coputer, and our computer pings them back. The servers compare the time codes on the pings, calculate our upload and download speeds, and Speakeasy reports them to us. At 8:00 am, 8:30 am, and 8:50 am EST, the speeds looked good -- 1400 KB/s down, 400 kb/s up. The number we worry about the most is the upload speed. We need a minimum of 108 Kb/s to get you a low-resolution video stream, over 300 Kb/s for a medium-resolution stream.

You should also know that we don't have the bandwidth or the equipment to send a video stream directly to all of you. Instead, we send a single stream to a streaming service (Upstream), and they duplicate it and distribute it to multiple viewers.

With 5 minutes to go, we pinged Upstream to open the connection between our server and theirs. We got no answer. We tried again several times, then did a quick speed check. Our upload speed had dropped below 7 Kb/s. (Dial-up modems crawl along at 54 Kb/s.) This situation continued for the entire morning and well into the afternoon. At one time, around 11:00 am EST, when were supposed to begin our second webcast, the upload speed dropped to 1 Kb/s.

At this point, Drew and I decided to call the game. We taped the presentations we had planned and when we left around 3:00 pm, we did a final speed check. The upload speed had climbed to 11 Kb/s -- the highest we had seen since 8:50 am.

Currrently, Drew is adding the intro, outro, and watermark to the presentations, and I will post them on the Sawdust Sessions page (http://www.shopsmithacademy.com/Sawdust_Sessions.htm) as soon as he's finished. In the meantime, Dave (ADMIN) and I are trying to discover what caused this problem. We have contacted our Internet Service Provider and they are looking into this from their end.

What this all boils down to is that at present we don't know for sure what's going on. For those of you who speak technobabble, my suspicion is that the ISP connection that Times Warner advertises as being "as good as" a T1 line really isn't. The up/down numbers from Speakeasy indicate that it is instead an ADSL -- an Assymetric Digital Service Line in which the equipment used favors the download signal over the upload signal. At the very least we may have to upgrade to an SDSL (Symetric Digital Service Line) or open a second connection to be able to webcast live content on schedule.

All of this is guesswork at this point, and I'm taking the time to explain what little I know because I value your interest and your friendship.

Drew, Dave, and I will work as hard as we can to solve this problem before the next scheduled Sawdust Session (September 29), and I'll keep you informed of our progress.

With all good wishes,

[scottss]

Thanks Nick. Drew and Dave for trying and don't give up. This is a great platform that just needs some tweeking. My one question I have though is if we do a pay for view session like say Fundamentals of Woodworking
or toy making or whatever will it come through ok?
Again thanks :D

[Nick]

Obviously, Scott, we cannot offer a service if we cannot provide it reliably. Shopsmith has a reputation of providing quality tools and education, and we would be foolish to do anything to detract from it. We will notify the students that we have that classes are suspended and refrain from accepting new students until we are sure we've solved this problem. My guess is that the fix is simple -- upgrade our current ISP service or open a second. Either one should allow us to continue with our plans and grow as a "content provider" to the woodworking community. We'll lick this in short order; it isn't rocket surgery, after all.

With all good wishes,

[Bruce]

Nick,
Thanks for the explanation of the bandwidth problem. I suspected something like that. Above I mentioned the option of using a Quicktime stream instead of Windows Media. I know the bandwidth problem is your first concern, but will you be exploring the possibility of switching to Quicktime. It is an industry standard that works with both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Microsoft stopped supporting Macintosh computers some time back and third party solutions are not the best. Apple continues to develop for both Mac and Windows.

[paulmcohen]

I work for one of they largest computer companies in the world and have real T3 and OC3 (45 million bits per second) lines coming into and out of our servers and whenever we do a webcast we outsource it. Our largest provided is Akamai.

www.akamai.com/en/html/services/streaming.html

There are also companies what will handle much of the logistics for a commission on the event. The other option is to go with the non-real time, which is the only thing I ever watch (I can't get up that early on a weekend).

Good luck, I have learned something on every video I have seen.