Using Serviio in a somewhat complex network

I am struggling to make Serviio work properly in our school network. It works flawlessly when I'm using wired connections in the educational network segment, but we need more. I can't find any description of a similar situation in this forum or the wiki, but that might be because I have looked in all the wrong places and used stupid search terms. If that be the case, I apologize! (I have a reasonably good understanding of networking, but I guess my skill classifies as "low intermediate" when we talk about media distribution, streaming and such.) So here goes ...

Our network:
No IPv6. We are still using IPv4 exclusively, with all public addresses (no private networks/NAT). As far as routing and firewalls go, I do not have access to configuration, nor do I have full knowledge of what restrictions are in place. The ICT administration in the municipality governs that (but to some degree I can request adjustments when needed).

Educational network segment: 6 separate logical IP subnets of "C-class" (24 bit netmask), all sharing the same physical infrastructure (same VLAN, using Cisco Catalyst switches and -Aironet wireless access points). A router ports traffic between the subnets, so for unicast traffic the subnets are functionally the same as one larger subnet. There are ~200 wired connectors available, and ~50 wireless access points.

Multicast reaches all IP subnets (same physical network), but is blocked on the wireless part of our network. (We have some multicast traffic already, and allowing that onto the wireless access points would choke our network.)

We have ~100 teachers and ~700 students using the educational network, running MS Windows (~70%), Apple OSX (~30%) and Linux (perhaps 2-3 students and myself.)

Administration segment: One IP subnet on a VLAN separated from the educational network. No wireless networking. Some traffic is routed to the educational network, e.g. for printing. Multicast on educational network does not reach this network.

We have ~25 users on the administration network, and most of them have some teaching in addition to their administration tasks, so they may also need access to the Serviio service.

Serviio install: on the educational network. Ubuntu server 12.04 LTS. Serviio starts on boot (no login required), thanks to excellent guidance from the wiki. By far the best server I have found in terms of useability and simplicity, but alas, I can't use it on wireless. All classrooms have a wired network port, and in many cases it is available, but not all.

We have a lot of videos digitized from old VHS recordings, and manually edited "nfo" files for the metadata. Connecting through UPnP is easy and quick, and the "sidecar-file" metadata is easy to manage and builds a nice structure for finding the video. For practical purposes, I haven't found any other product that serves our needs like Serviio does. I have used VLC and XBMC on the client side, and hardly experienced any problems (only some versions of VLC not connecting via UPnP, but I understand that this is a known VLC issue and nothing to do with Serviio).

What we need:
Primary: Access to the Serviio service in classrooms.
Secondary: Access to the service for the administration network.
Nice to have:Service available for portable units (iPad etc.)

I guess all needs would be covered if it is possible to set up unicast connection to the server.

• Is that possible with Serviio, or should I use something else?
• How do I connect from the client applications I mentioned (VLC/XBMC)?

A small switch in each classroom would make wired ports available, but I'd rather not have the network mess that cheap swithces make in a large network, and I don't have the money to buy a Catalyst for each room.

Any guidance would be welcome (also links to information about protocols and best practices, useful software and client setup tips).

Edit: I think it may be a bad idea to push out XBMC to users. It seems to be easily configured as a media source in itself (which is the logical setup for home), and I really don't want a hundred media servers advertising their services on the school network. Please tell me there is nothing to worry about

[grolschie]

Just some thoughts/questions. Is Serviio running on a powerful, dedicated server? I'm wondering how many users would be accessing Serviio concurrently? If many, then a solution that requires no transcoding on the server might be worth considering (i.e. hardware decoding on the clients).

Serviio Pro has the mediabrowser which people can easily access via web browsers, but I think that requires transcoding for most formats. Simple, but possibly not good for many concurrent users?

Presuming classrooms have a projector or a large TV screen, is using set top boxes with built-in DLNA clients (e.g. Blu-Ray players, etc) an option?

Just some thoughts/questions. Is Serviio running on a powerful, dedicated server? I'm wondering how many users would be accessing Serviio concurrently? If many, then a solution that requires no transcoding on the server might be worth considering (i.e. hardware decoding on the clients).

Serviio Pro has the mediabrowser which people can easily access via web browsers, but I think that requires transcoding for most formats. Simple, but possibly not good for many concurrent users?

Presuming classrooms have a projector or a large TV screen, is using set top boxes with built-in DLNA clients (e.g. Blu-Ray players, etc) an option?

Running a dedicated server. The current server hardware is a couple of years old Fujitsu-Siemens, at the time specifically sold as a media server. ~2GHz triple core CPU and 8 GB RAM. It runs basically a server install of Ubuntu, but I installed a GUI to enable some software to run locally. We had to replace the graphics card, because the original one (fanless) caused overheating, but the replacement was an upgrade, IIRC. Can't say what specific models the HW units are, but I can post more detail when I'm back to work, over easter.

As long as it is only classroom use/viewing on projector, 5-10 concurrent streams is the likely top load. Tested with 8 simultaneous connections, and the cpu load (according to the "top" command) kept below 10%, which looks comfortable. If the service is advertised to students, we could easily have 50 concurrent users, so that may be a problem. Most of our files (98%) are mpeg4. I thought that was the format output to streams, so transcoding would be kept to a minimum. Is that correct? I could also disable the GUI to reduce server overhead. Not sure what that would amount to...

Not sure how set top boxes represent an advantage compared to software on teacher PCs. We still have the issue of wired vs. wireless, and for wired, investing in proper wiring to all classrooms (or a VLAN-enabled switch in each room). I run the first 14 days still, so I have the Pro trial. Will look into the media browser. Thanks!

[atc98092]

Just some thoughts/questions. Is Serviio running on a powerful, dedicated server? I'm wondering how many users would be accessing Serviio concurrently? If many, then a solution that requires no transcoding on the server might be worth considering (i.e. hardware decoding on the clients).

Serviio Pro has the mediabrowser which people can easily access via web browsers, but I think that requires transcoding for most formats. Simple, but possibly not good for many concurrent users?

Presuming classrooms have a projector or a large TV screen, is using set top boxes with built-in DLNA clients (e.g. Blu-Ray players, etc) an option?

Running a dedicated server. The current server hardware is a couple of years old Fujitsu-Siemens, at the time specifically sold as a media server. ~2GHz triple core CPU and 8 GB RAM. It runs basically a server install of Ubuntu, but I installed a GUI to enable some software to run locally. We had to replace the graphics card, because the original one (fanless) caused overheating, but the replacement was an upgrade, IIRC. Can't say what specific models the HW units are, but I can post more detail when I'm back to work, over easter.

As long as it is only classroom use/viewing on projector, 5-10 concurrent streams is the likely top load. Tested with 8 simultaneous connections, and the cpu load (according to the "top" command) kept below 10%, which looks comfortable. If the service is advertised to students, we could easily have 50 concurrent users, so that may be a problem. Most of our files (98%) are mpeg4. I thought that was the format output to streams, so transcoding would be kept to a minimum. Is that correct? I could also disable the GUI to reduce server overhead. Not sure what that would amount to...

Not sure how set top boxes represent an advantage compared to software on teacher PCs. We still have the issue of wired vs. wireless, and for wired, investing in proper wiring to all classrooms (or a VLAN-enabled switch in each room). I run the first 14 days still, so I have the Pro trial. Will look into the media browser. Thanks!

My server has similar specs to yours. I have run a couple of transcoded streams that run over 90% CPU, and Serviio still streamed without any hiccups. If you have 10 streams now, with under 10% CPU, you should handle 50 streams just fine. Throw in transcoding, and you may have a different story.

Your network capacity, however, might become more of a limiting factor. I reread your original post to see if you had specified your network speed, but didn't see it. If you are 100BaseT, 50 streams might become an issue, especially if any of the streams are HD. A 100BaseT network will run out of overhead around 75Mbps, maybe 80. 50 streams at even 2Mbps exceed that quickly.

For wireless, an 802.11N or .11AB could handle it, but an .11G would be getting tight, unless your system worked with the full 300Mbps speed. On my home .11N network it only seems to connect around 75-85Mbps, and that's with a laptop within 10 feet of the WAP.

The advantage I've seen using a media player box is that they seem to support playing more videos without transcoding. Also, the options of displaying captions and selecting different audio tracks may be more available with the player. My Sony Blu-Ray players support MKV (along with many other formats) without transcoding, and I can select captions and audio tracks as well. Something like the Roku can play MP4 files without transcoding. They are connect both wired or wireless. However, as I mentioned above, using wireless will likely require multiple assess points, as using only one will likely be unable to support 50 streams.

Again, video file format AND player support will determine the need for transcoding. Probably the most common file format that will play on almost anything without transcoding would be MP4.

[grolschie]

...
The advantage I've seen using a media player box is that they seem to support playing more videos without transcoding.
...

This.

Thanks!

The server is connected to a core switch with gigabit speed. Most endpoints are on 100 Mb ports. With multicast, I believe the endpoint speed is the limit for total server throughput, while unicast traffic makes better use of bandwidth resources with multiple channels running.

My videos are ripped from old VHS tapes, and not very high quality, so we won't stream a lot at HD quality. That, and less need for transcoding, may be the reason for my relatively low cpu load. Have to do some additional tests...

Anyway, future productions (our own as well as what we acquire from other sources) will be higher quality. I suppose that wired connections and a dedicated vlan is the way to go, then, even if we set a cap on video quality.

Thanks again. You have been very helpful.

I think I have a working concept now, but I would still like to know about solutions which behave similarly (providing browseable data structures based on metadata), but uses explicit addressing for each connection (unicast) instead of addressing the entire network (as it does with multicast). It is not essential to facilitate connection by way of UPnP.