Delivering Flash Video: Dynamic Bandwidth Detection with Macromedia Flash Communication Server

Setting Up the Server-Side Application

First create the bwcheck folder:

1. Create a folder by the name of bwcheck inside your Flash Communication Server application folder. On Windows, this folder's default location is:

   C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash Communication Server MX\applications

2. Copy bwcheck.asc into the bwcheck folder.

Next create the videoplayer folder:

1. Create a folder called videoplayer in the same location inside the applications folder.
2. Inside the videoplayer folder, create a folder called streams.
3. Inside the streams folder, create another folder called _definst_.
4. Copy the two FLV files (100kbps_Stream.flv and 256kbps_Stream.flv) included in the sample file download into the _definst_ folder.

Your folder structure should now look like Figure 1.

Figure 1. Server-side folder structure

The reason why you deploy to separate applications is obvious: It leaves you more flexible when other applications also want to access the bwcheck application. Rather than integrating the bandwidth-check code into each and every new application, you simply connect to bwcheck, gather the test results, and disconnect again. Your SWF file holds the data and connects to your main application, leaving you with only minimal scripting to do on the client side and no server-side scripting left to do at all.

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