IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Makes Video and Audio in Silverlight Rock!
by David Hayden ( Microsoft MVP C# ), Filed: IIS 7.0, Silverlight
Silverlight is really, really cool and awesome at delivering audio / video.
However, it is the Bit Rate Throttling Module in IIS 7.0 that makes it a reality for delivering audio and video over the web.
Essentially you can throttle the delivery of any file based on its type, and there is special functionality for digital audio/video files. Throttling can be set at various levels with the IIS Manager: server, site, virtual directory, and file.
What is really cool is the advanced media throttling for digit audio/video files:
Advanced Media Throttling: One of the most significant features in the new Bit Rate Throttling module is the advanced support of audio/video media formats. This includes automatic detection of the encoded bit rate in a file, and intelligent progressive-download throttling based on that. Built-in support is included for digital media with the following file name extensions: .asf, .avi, .flv, .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wma, .wmv. An administrator can simply enable Bit Rate Throttling and start intelligently delivering these common media types using the default throttling settings.
Scott Guthrie puts it in terms we can all relate:
“One of the challenges when hosting large videos and audio files on the Internet is that bandwidth costs can be expensive. What is worse is that you often end up having to pay for users to download videos that aren't fully watched. Specifically, web-servers are by default designed to download content files as fast as possible. So if a user visits your site and starts watching a 50MB video on it, the web-server will by default try and transmit the 50MB file as quickly as possible to them. If the user closes the browser half-way through watching the video, you will end up having to pay for the remaining 25MB of content they had finished downloading - but which they never actually watched.”
The key here is that you can avoid eating the entire bandwidth for a video that is not entirely watched. Again, per Scott:
”If the user closes the browser on the video while it is playing, IIS7 will automatically detect the connection was dropped and avoid sending any more of the content (saving you the remaining bandwidth costs).”
Dang... that is nice! So when you cancel out of my screencasts when served via IIS 7.0 I don't get charged for the full bandwidth :) That will save me some money!
Source: David Hayden ( Microsoft MVP C# ), Filed: IIS 7.0, Silverlight