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So that users could see each other while chatting tete-a-tete? I know it depends but though how many resourses on the average do I need to power two people see each other over the net for a certain period of time, say, one minute? In figures of CPU, RAM and such things, please.

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    It is obvious that you are not anywhere near the level to be thinking about what resources you need. If you are looking to create a cam chatting website, I suggest contacting a local professional and hiring them to work with you. – Scrivener Jun 15 '11 at 04:52

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How long is a piece of string? There are many different technologies, approaches and codecs you could utilize when setting this up, and the figures you arrive at will depend entirely on each choice you make.

For example, you could run a site that served direct user-to-user camera connections via a flash interface, bypassing the need to act as an intermediate point for all traffic. This has the benefit of drastically cutting your bandwidth requirements, but the negative of allowing clients to discover and connect to each other directly. In this scenario, your bandwidth requirements are only what's needed to serve out the initial web request & flash files, then some ongoing communication/state messaging. You avoid the actual streaming traffic handling and palm it off to the clients themselves.

On the other hand, you could host the video connection directly between yourself and the client. Which codecs would you like to use? What resolution voice and video? Your bandwidth usage would be: Each clients upload rate added together for your download rate, and the same again outbound to send that data onwards to the client. Are you going to also record each session to the server as it's occuring? Significant additional resources will be needed for that.

Anecdotal: For me, MSN uses about 12k/second for video chat with audio, on a 320*240 average cam. From a server's point of view, you'd be looking at 24k/s inbound and 24k/s outbound plus a bit of overhead for control traffic, to host that conversation.

The only way to get decent info about CPU/Memory requirements will be to run a proper test on the particular hardware you intend to use. All CPUs are not created equal.

Chris Thorpe
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  • Thank you, Chris. Yeah, good point, I must do the testing myself. I would put such a project in the cloud (powered by Amazon). Front-end done in ActionScript, I believe my server (or servers) must be the mediator in the video chat. –  May 13 '10 at 07:19
  • No video recording required, just streaming. Although, I can't let peer-to-peer connections, as the project would be the one to make money out of. So, I would need some control in place. –  May 13 '10 at 07:31
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    Th control come with a HUGH price. Bandwidth will be HUGH. Like REALLY BAD BAD BAD. Pretty much all video / audio try to go point to point these days (SIP, videoconferencing in general). Amazon pricing will kill you. – TomTom Apr 08 '11 at 09:06