Stake Conference Broadcasts - Alternative to Church Servers
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:15 am
We're using Meetinghouse Webcast to broadcast stake conference from our stake center to 3 other chapels (our stake is rural and spread out).
We've put a lot of time, effort, and money into our equipment and internet setup, and it is quite reliable. We do lots of testing before-hand.
However, having a successful test during the week or on Saturday has nothing to do with how things will work on Sunday morning, when the Church servers are getting hammered with dozens of other stakes at the same time.
Yesterday we had our stake conference, and after having our test broadcasts go for 4 hours without a hiccup, we couldn't stay connected to the Church servers for more than 30 seconds. With 30 minutes to go we prayed about it and then had everyone come to the stake center, scrambling to setup every chair in the building and deal with parking, etc.
To complicate matters, for the first time I wasn't able to reach anyone at Church HQ, just getting a recorded message that ran me in circles.
We've had this problem in the past, but not to this extent. Usually dropping from high to medium quality kept us connected. This time even low quality dropped after 30 seconds.
Our internet is 8M / 1M at the chapels, and 16M / 2M at the stake center (turned up for the week of stake conference). Bandwidth speed tests showed all was working fine on our end.
What are others doing to deal with this?
Options include:
1. Setting up our own streaming server (would work fine for the other 3 buildings, but there would be no bandwidth left for shut-ins).
2. Working with our ISP to setup a streaming server for us and other stakes in the area, if they're willing.
3. Use a company that provides this service (there are many out there, and multiple companies could be worked with to eliminate the server as a single point of failure).
4. Perhaps the Church could setup regional servers (for instance we're in southern Utah, and there are probably enough stakes to justify a server being placed at an ISP down here, with a fall back option to servers at Church HQ).
5. Upgrades and additional reliability for the servers at Church HQ.
6. Give up on broadcasting altogether and cram people into every nook and cranny of the stake center each time.
I'm not sure what we'll end up doing, but we won't be rolling the dice anymore on the day of stake conference without some sort of fall back (and we've never gotten good enough audio quality using the phone backup to rely on that).
The disruptions and quality problems are significant enough to affect the attitude of the members about stake conference, so the status quo can't continue.
I really appreciate everything the Church has done to get us this far, and embracing technology is absolutely the way to go, so I applaud the effort and direction this is going.
Thanks,
Brian
We've put a lot of time, effort, and money into our equipment and internet setup, and it is quite reliable. We do lots of testing before-hand.
However, having a successful test during the week or on Saturday has nothing to do with how things will work on Sunday morning, when the Church servers are getting hammered with dozens of other stakes at the same time.
Yesterday we had our stake conference, and after having our test broadcasts go for 4 hours without a hiccup, we couldn't stay connected to the Church servers for more than 30 seconds. With 30 minutes to go we prayed about it and then had everyone come to the stake center, scrambling to setup every chair in the building and deal with parking, etc.
To complicate matters, for the first time I wasn't able to reach anyone at Church HQ, just getting a recorded message that ran me in circles.
We've had this problem in the past, but not to this extent. Usually dropping from high to medium quality kept us connected. This time even low quality dropped after 30 seconds.
Our internet is 8M / 1M at the chapels, and 16M / 2M at the stake center (turned up for the week of stake conference). Bandwidth speed tests showed all was working fine on our end.
What are others doing to deal with this?
Options include:
1. Setting up our own streaming server (would work fine for the other 3 buildings, but there would be no bandwidth left for shut-ins).
2. Working with our ISP to setup a streaming server for us and other stakes in the area, if they're willing.
3. Use a company that provides this service (there are many out there, and multiple companies could be worked with to eliminate the server as a single point of failure).
4. Perhaps the Church could setup regional servers (for instance we're in southern Utah, and there are probably enough stakes to justify a server being placed at an ISP down here, with a fall back option to servers at Church HQ).
5. Upgrades and additional reliability for the servers at Church HQ.
6. Give up on broadcasting altogether and cram people into every nook and cranny of the stake center each time.
I'm not sure what we'll end up doing, but we won't be rolling the dice anymore on the day of stake conference without some sort of fall back (and we've never gotten good enough audio quality using the phone backup to rely on that).
The disruptions and quality problems are significant enough to affect the attitude of the members about stake conference, so the status quo can't continue.
I really appreciate everything the Church has done to get us this far, and embracing technology is absolutely the way to go, so I applaud the effort and direction this is going.
Thanks,
Brian