Make your Live streaming test a Success
Part 3. – Evaluating your test
It is important to have specific things to look for during your streaming test, so that you can accurately determine if it was successful, and if not what went wrong.
Below are five questions that you should keep track of during and after your test:
1. Was the stream delivered with minimal buffering?
If ‘No’, how long was the buffering (in seconds)?
2. Was the stream viewable by all PCs?
If ‘No’, please provide the following information:
Make:
CPU:
RAM:
OS:
Firewalls:
3. Was there any mid-stream buffering?
If ‘Yes’:
How many times did this occur?
During how long a time?
What was the download capacity of the PC?*
4. Was the stream’s quality degraded when multiple viewers logged on?
If ‘Yes’, how many viewers logged in before the degradation occurred?
5. Was the stream delivered at the same quality as the preview in WME?
If, ‘No’, what is the upload capacity of the Encoder?*
* Below is a link to a popular speed test site which has test points located all over the globe. All you will need to run this test is a java applet (which they will have you download if you don’t already have it installed). It’s as easy as installing the applet then clicking the start test button.
Here is the link to the test site…
http://www.broadbandreports.com/speedtest?more=1
Simply select a test location nearest to you and then follow the directions. The number that you will be interested in is the Kbps number, this will give you a basic idea of what your connection can handle. The typical DSL connection has around 2044 kbps down and 768 up.
