Transmission on the Internet

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Mr. G
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Mr. G »

Kilaya. wrote:
Mr. G wrote:You just received this email Kilaya? Was this in response to an email you sent them?
No, it came from Norbunet email list.
Nice! Hope that this problem gets addressed! :twothumbsup:
  • How foolish you are,
    grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention!
    - Vasubandhu
pawel
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by pawel »

But what problem?
The point is, it is opportunity. As wirh all opportunities, there are circumstances.
Of course it is great idea to improve the webcast, which does not really mean it's not good as it now is; but improving it does not also mean there will never be problems.
The team was doing really great providing other streams; it was either net from Argentina or server.

As for the getting the initiation itself, the sound of mantras wasn't heard here nor was it possible to get on with following the visualizations along the practice.
But let's remember the main point of what initiation is really.
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Mr. G
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Mr. G »

pawel wrote:But what problem?
The intermittent breaking up and latency of both audio and video during webcasts.
pawel wrote: The point is, it is opportunity. As wirh all opportunities, there are circumstances.
Of course it is great idea to improve the webcast, which does not really mean it's not good as it now is; but improving it does not also mean there will never be problems.
The team was doing really great providing other streams; it was either net from Argentina or server.
No one ever said there would not be problems, but potential problems can be minimized.
  • How foolish you are,
    grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention!
    - Vasubandhu
krodha
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by krodha »

Mr. G wrote:
Sönam wrote:No one simply notice that all what happens (or not) was simply our circumstances, that we hear what we were supposed to hear, at the right place, at the right moment.

Sönam
No, I noticed it Sonam. However, it doesn't mean we become fatalists, for improvements can be put in place for the future
Agreed, I think it's just constructive criticism... Undoubtably nothing can be done to change the circumstances regarding the nature of the connection in these past days, and if this is how the situation will remain for the time being we can all understand and accept that. However, for the sake of Rinpoche taking the time to teach and for the benefit of all interested in learning (in addition to those who work hard to make it all possible) it seems addressing the connection is only logical.

The point is to properly deliver the teaching. Just like the implementation of translators who are there to help in communicating better, the implementation of a proper system to deliver the message over the web is also a pertinent issue.

So I agree we all only heard what we were supposed to hear, because what we heard, is what we heard. Worrying about that is a futile endeavor. As you already said though, there's nothing wrong with improvement!
witness
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Re: ChNNR Dorje Drolo retreat

Post by witness »

Pero wrote:
Mr. G wrote:Which is why a deep dive into the root cause should be performed.
Would be good but perhaps it does not happen often enough for them to think it that important?
I have seen this happening quite a bit in the past few months, actually. Worse so on the days when more people might be interested in listening live, like getting the lungs on the last day of a retreat. The November World Transmission video feed had a lot of problems as well, to put it mildly. Numerous messages on this forum can attest to the same.

Interestingly, I have never had problems receiving the video feed during the times before and after the teachings. The broadcasting usually starts about an hour in advance, and continues for a while after the teaching is finished. In my experience, those times are virtually problem-free.

So, given this correlation between the demand and quality, I would venture a guess that the fault is not with the uplink, but rather with the streaming servers, which either lack hardware or the network bandwith to serve the growing number of people interested in participating in the webcasts.

I completely agree with Mr. G that this is an issue worth investigating, and I sincerely hope that it can, and will be resolved.
dcbz
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by dcbz »

I'm a student of ChNN for some years. Today I also had problems with the internet transmission ...... but wow, to even have the possibility of the briefest of contact with the Master --- it's a gift. Anyway, for ChNN he'd want the internet working perfectly for sure - but he'd also tell you that collecting initiations is not very helpful compared to one second of real awareness. For a practitioner of Guru Yoga, today was good - maybe not what we expected, but still something quite wonderful. The people in the DC are not many in number and there is not so much money. That we can do any of this is really kind of miraculous. If you are serious about the practice and really want these things to be better, please join the community and help. We're all dancing as fast as we can ....... honestly this is a wonderful group of people trying so very hard to do things.
This is my first post - perhaps the only one - we shall see.
blackpath
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by blackpath »

Nice! Hope that this problem gets addressed!
Worldwide video and audio streaming is an interesting problem. I've been responsible for teams implementing a few different streaming architectures--and I've studied a number of commercial providers including ustream. Depending on the number of user hours consumed, I would expect an enterprise level streaming capability (no ads) with a reasonable SLA to cost anywhere from US 3K-10K a month. That would be just an open system, not accounting for integration or support/security for an authenticated system, password management and the like required for closed broadcasts. A system like that should be rather good at the broadcast, but the feeder system/node, and its relative remoteness are still uncontrolled factors.

That being said, I'm beyond thankful for what's been provided to date, and hope these broadcasts continue.
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arsent
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by arsent »

It was my post on the norbunet and I got reply from the webcast team member. In a few words - it is local gar network issues:
the issue the webcast had these days are related to the poor internet
connection at the Gar (streaming point).

The webcast system relies on a series of server in US and in Europe and is
able to stream in high quality video to over 4000+ user (being part of one
of the biggest CDN).

Unfortunately if the source of the stream has a poor connection, the
infrastructure simply can't do much about it but to transmit what it
receives.

We're more than happy to give more details about how the system works and
the intrinsic challenges of webcasting (that also explain why we have a
replay service).
Meanwhile the best approach to solve these kind of problems is to help the
Gars develop their network infrastructure (internet connection).
So we have to be thankful that it is really works somehow and we didn't lost completely the ability to listen the teaching!
Have a good no drop stream to everyone tomorrow morning!
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Sönam
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Sönam »

Our common circumstances are improving ... thank you for the community dance.

Sönam
By understanding everything you perceive from the perspective of the view, you are freed from the constraints of philosophical beliefs.
By understanding that any and all mental activity is meditation, you are freed from arbitrary divisions between formal sessions and postmeditation activity.
- Longchen Rabjam -
daelm
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Re: ChNNR Dorje Drolo retreat

Post by daelm »

witness wrote:
Pero wrote:
Mr. G wrote:Which is why a deep dive into the root cause should be performed.
Would be good but perhaps it does not happen often enough for them to think it that important?
Interestingly, I have never had problems receiving the video feed during the times before and after the teachings. The broadcasting usually starts about an hour in advance, and continues for a while after the teaching is finished. In my experience, those times are virtually problem-free. So, given this correlation between the demand and quality, I would venture a guess that the fault is not with the uplink, but rather with the streaming servers, which either lack hardware or the network bandwith to serve the growing number of people interested in participating in the webcasts.
I have noticed the same - streaming fine until the designated start of the session and then collapse and intermittency.

d
ELPA
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by ELPA »

Guys, Luiggi Ottaviani - the Director of Shang Shung Inst - is responsible for the current web-cast system. he doesn't listen to anyone, even Khyentse. He is very very conservative. So, you should write him about these web-cast issues.
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Sönam
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Sönam »

Kilaya. wrote:I just received this email. We became famous. :)
Greetings to all of community members!

I do not know to whom to address this message, but if anybody know, please forward it to IT tech group who supports webcasts.
I want to remind everyone about today's issues with online webcast transmission of the teachings. A lot of people that was connected online was suffering from this tech issues all the way, and basically a some of them have concerns now about did they get the transmission at all or not.
If interesting, please just take a few minutes to read through discussion on dharmawheel forum about this. http://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=6923" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Someone could say that it is karmic staff, that somebody didn't get the transmission or have doubt after it, and it will takes later better time for him and he will be able to get it, but I think that may be it could be better way of preparation for upcoming web casts from tech group (testing hardware and software in different configurations or trying another software - Ustream for example) to avoid in a future such problems. Or may be if it was overloading all the time with upcoming connections from anonymous users it is good to have different streams or servers for members and nonmembers?
To clarify, because I'm the someone ... It has not been said that it is karmic staff, but "circumstances". And everyoby know that circumstances is not karma, but conditions. And we all know that conditions is our freewill ... therefor can be improved

Sönam
By understanding everything you perceive from the perspective of the view, you are freed from the constraints of philosophical beliefs.
By understanding that any and all mental activity is meditation, you are freed from arbitrary divisions between formal sessions and postmeditation activity.
- Longchen Rabjam -
daelm
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by daelm »

arsent wrote:It was my post on the norbunet and I got reply from the webcast team member. In a few words - it is local gar network issues:
the issue the webcast had these days are related to the poor internet
connection at the Gar (streaming point).

The webcast system relies on a series of server in US and in Europe and is
able to stream in high quality video to over 4000+ user (being part of one
of the biggest CDN).

Unfortunately if the source of the stream has a poor connection, the
infrastructure simply can't do much about it but to transmit what it
receives.

We're more than happy to give more details about how the system works and
the intrinsic challenges of webcasting (that also explain why we have a
replay service).
Meanwhile the best approach to solve these kind of problems is to help the
Gars develop their network infrastructure (internet connection).
that's what i though when i said earlier it's a problem at source. i'm not familiar with the technology so i can't help with that, but it seems to me that there are a few obvious responses. basically, answers have to focus on the various individual gars as webcast sources.

there are two ways to address this: either retain the source as it is (unreliable, etc) but remove the direct load from it. so, from a technology point of view, can anyone say whether or not there is a way to buffer and relay a broadcast from a central reliable server - like a (marginal lag?) upload/download system? blackpath, who posted earlier seemed to have insights into this.

secondly, we can address the source infrastructure itself, by making a portion of the DC memberships mandatory for infrastructure improvement, perhaps even across gars. does anyone know whether there is any kind of charter of expenditure that describes this already?


d
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Grigoris »

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pawel
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by pawel »

I meant, the webcasts are mostly stable - specially audio. As I thought it turned out to be the issue at the source. Hopefully it will all - the infrasrtucture and system - grow better :smile:
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Mr. G
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Mr. G »

ELPA wrote:Guys, Luiggi Ottaviani - the Director of Shang Shung Inst - is responsible for the current web-cast system. he doesn't listen to anyone, even Khyentse. He is very very conservative. So, you should write him about these web-cast issues.
Well if Luiggi doesn't listen to Khyentse, I doubt he'll listen to us. :lol:
  • How foolish you are,
    grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention!
    - Vasubandhu
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Mr. G
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Mr. G »

daelm wrote:
arsent wrote:It was my post on the norbunet and I got reply from the webcast team member. In a few words - it is local gar network issues:
the issue the webcast had these days are related to the poor internet
connection at the Gar (streaming point).

The webcast system relies on a series of server in US and in Europe and is
able to stream in high quality video to over 4000+ user (being part of one
of the biggest CDN).

Unfortunately if the source of the stream has a poor connection, the
infrastructure simply can't do much about it but to transmit what it
receives.

We're more than happy to give more details about how the system works and
the intrinsic challenges of webcasting (that also explain why we have a
replay service).
Meanwhile the best approach to solve these kind of problems is to help the
Gars develop their network infrastructure (internet connection).
that's what i though when i said earlier it's a problem at source. i'm not familiar with the technology so i can't help with that, but it seems to me that there are a few obvious responses. basically, answers have to focus on the various individual gars as webcast sources.

there are two ways to address this: either retain the source as it is (unreliable, etc) but remove the direct load from it. so, from a technology point of view, can anyone say whether or not there is a way to buffer and relay a broadcast from a central reliable server - like a (marginal lag?) upload/download system? blackpath, who posted earlier seemed to have insights into this.

secondly, we can address the source infrastructure itself, by making a portion of the DC memberships mandatory for infrastructure improvement, perhaps even across gars. does anyone know whether there is any kind of charter of expenditure that describes this already?


d
A couple of points:

If the issue is at the source (local Gar), then the Gar or Gakyil that is hosting the event should upgrade with their local ISP to a business account for that month. Costs would be minimal. For example if a non-commercial internet access account costs around $30, an upgrade to about $80 would be worth it for that one month that the webcast is being held. For example a non-commercial account offers up to 15Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream speed. A commercial account could offer up to 101 Mbps downstream, 15 Mbps upstream. For an extra 50 dollars that month, the hosting Gar or Gakyil could resolve the source issue. I would have no issue donating for this cause....if this resolved the issue.

That being said, I'd like to see blackpath's breakdown of pricing to be around 3K a month. It seems Ustream offers an Enterprise streaming package that is ad free with private streaming options (for closed webcasts) for 1K a month. The question is would members pay extra for this? I know I would.
  • How foolish you are,
    grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention!
    - Vasubandhu
daelm
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by daelm »

Mr. G wrote:
A couple of points:

If the issue is at the source (local Gar), then the Gar or Gakyil that is hosting the event should upgrade with their local ISP to a business account for that month. Costs would be minimal. For example if a non-commercial internet access account costs around $30, an upgrade to about $80 would be worth it for that one month that the webcast is being held. For example a non-commercial account offers up to 15Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream speed. A commercial account could offer up to 101 Mbps downstream, 15 Mbps upstream. For an extra 50 dollars that month, the hosting Gar or Gakyil could resolve the source issue. I would have no issue donating for this cause....if this resolved the issue.

That being said, I'd like to see blackpath's breakdown of pricing to be around 3K a month. It seems Ustream offers an Enterprise streaming package that is ad free with private streaming options (for closed webcasts) for 1K a month. The question is would members pay extra for this? I know I would.
i also get the feeling it's a problem that's solved by regularly throwing a little money at it. and i'm completely ok with that, and would be happy to help.

then there's a matter of some pre-webcast coordination with the local gar and making sure that the money has been spent and so on. a pre-emptive strike, if you will, the week before. it's not a huge problem for something like that to be done and it strikes me that that can be done centrally, but i really have no idea how the DC functions and who owns this responsibility and so on. i just pay a membership here in South Africa, where there is no DC, and remain largely in the dark about these things. :) .

so i'd really like it if those people on this forum who are actively involved in that kind of DC discussion and activity could chip in and help make it clear how it all works, just as others have helped clarify some of the technology discussion. maybe we could see a way to help then.



d
Last edited by daelm on Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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padma norbu
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by padma norbu »

blackpath wrote:
Nice! Hope that this problem gets addressed!
Worldwide video and audio streaming is an interesting problem. I've been responsible for teams implementing a few different streaming architectures--and I've studied a number of commercial providers including ustream. Depending on the number of user hours consumed, I would expect an enterprise level streaming capability (no ads) with a reasonable SLA to cost anywhere from US 3K-10K a month. That would be just an open system, not accounting for integration or support/security for an authenticated system, password management and the like required for closed broadcasts. A system like that should be rather good at the broadcast, but the feeder system/node, and its relative remoteness are still uncontrolled factors.

That being said, I'm beyond thankful for what's been provided to date, and hope these broadcasts continue.
Which is why Ustream is the option to choose. A guy served up Phish concerts for tens of thousands of Phish fans via Ustream with nothing more than an iPhone. See http://hoodstream.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ...he actually made money to get him through touring with the band by taking donations on this website via Paypal. This was basically illegal activity as he was (1) video capturing the band without their permission (2) broadcasting the band without their permission (3) getting paid for it... Ustream never shut him down. Not only did he do this for free, illegally, to a massive audience, but he actually earned a lot of money in the process. And he's still doing it whenever they go on tour.
"Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings." Pema Chodron
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Mr. G
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Re: Transmission on the Internet

Post by Mr. G »

dcbz wrote:If you are serious about the practice and really want these things to be better, please join the community and help. We're all dancing as fast as we can ....... honestly this is a wonderful group of people trying so very hard to do things.
The majority of us are members and appreciate all that has been done for the community. However, if the community wants to be the vanguard in having online teachings of high quality, we should all do our best to help make this happen and not be complacent.
  • How foolish you are,
    grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention!
    - Vasubandhu
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