|
|
When you want to broadcast your content live, you can choose to either push the stream from the encoder to a Windows Media server or you can enable clients (Windows Media servers or players) to pull the content. The method you use depends upon your situation.
Pushing a stream from the encoder is useful if the encoder is behind a firewall or if you want to initiate the connection from the encoder. For example, assume you have just received last-minute notice that the president of your company wants to stream a talk to the company employees. The Windows Media server is located remotely, outside your company firewall. In fact, it is the middle of the night for the server administrator. By pushing the stream from the encoder, you can get the stream past the firewall, meet the president's request, and avoid making an emergency call to bring someone in to administer the server. Push distribution is only available with Windows Media Services 9 Series in Windows .NET Server 2003.
Enabling Windows Media servers to pull a stream is useful in several scenarios. First, if there are multiple distribution servers, all connecting at different times, each server can initiate the connection with the encoder when the server is ready to stream. Next, pulling from a server is useful if it is important to minimize bandwidth usage between the server and the encoder. For example, the server administrator can add a publishing point and configure it to start automatically upon client request, which means that the server does not initiate the connection with the encoder until the first client connects. This eliminates unnecessary bandwidth use between the server and the encoder. (This scenario is only available with Windows Media Services 9 Series in Windows .NET Server 2003.) Finally, pulling from the server is also useful when the server is behind a firewall. For example, assume you have set up the encoder on a public network because you are streaming events at a conference. You need to get the stream to a distribution server in the protected network. The server administrator can pull the stream through the firewall.
Enabling players to pull the stream is useful when you do not expect to have many clients viewing the stream. Windows Media Encoder allows up to five clients to connect directly to it during a broadcast. When you are enabling clients to pull the stream, you can restrict access to the content by IP address or by groups of IP addresses.