My client is thinking about implementing a cloud-hosted video streaming solution for their company. Ideally they want to be able to have 3k+ users watch a video at the same time and have it be reasonable quality. I did some quick math and found that for 3k users to watch even just a 240p video at the same time, it would require a minimum of 1200Mb of bandwidth (based on Google's suggestions for YouTube content). Considering they have a 300Mb pipe now, that doesn't seem doable.
I have two main questions:
- Is my math even close to correct? I used the bare minimum value, added in 128Kb audio (audio added based on this post), and multiplied it by 3000 to get that number.
- How do large companies generally go about implementing these kinds of solutions? Do they simply have larger pipes or is there some sort of network optimization that's possible (like Riverbed appliances) to serve this kind of content more effectively?