A Simple Flash Hosting Guide

There are two ways in which you start with flash hosting on your website. You can do everything yourself or you could hire a hosting provider that will take care of everything for you. It’s obviously better for you to use a hosting provider since it will take a huge burden off your chest. With the help of this flash hosting guide, you will be able to ensure you make the right choice. Here are a few important things that you should know:

Simultaneous connections

This term refers to the end-user connections of flash hosting. It basically means the number of users who can interact with the media applications at any point of time. Each users of the application will be considered a connection. If a user’s connected to the same application or to multiple applications at the same time, they will all be counted as individual connections.

Knowing the maximum simultaneous connections you are allowed is important. If you get 40 connections, it means only 40 people can access the application at the same time.

Peak bandwidth

Your peak bandwidth is nothing but the rate of speed, in Kbps or Mbps, at which data passes back and forth between users and the connection. The greater this number, the better it will be for your stream.

Bandwidth transfer

This is the total amount off audio, video, text or other data that can be transferred from your website to users and from the users to your website. If there is a prerecorded stream which just pushes data from your server to the user, it will be using less bandwidth as compared to live streams which are pushing & pulling data between the end users and server. Knowing the peak bandwidth rate and the expected views each month will greatly assist you when it comes to choosing the right hosting plan to cover the expected monthly transfer usage. Its okay to select a plan which offers a slightly higher transfer allowance so that you don’t exceed the allotted amount at any point.

Disk space

You can stream all sorts of audio and video files using flash. But remember that all of this needs disk space. The file size will vary depending on the encoding rate and length of the streams. If the applications will be streaming large files or allow heavy recording, you would want a plan that has a lot of disk space.

Shared vs dedicated server

Most basic plans are formed on shared servers. This means your account will reside on servers where resources are shared with other customers. This is always more affordable. They are sufficient for small to mid-size applications. For large applications, getting a dedicated server is always a better option.

Conclusion

If you do not have time to figure out your needs up front, you could always adopt the trial and error approach. Try a hosting company which offers cheap hosting plans and experiment with the settings to gain experience and to find what works best for you. Choosing the right hosting company is the most important decision you are going to make here.