File access: Can I make this go faster?

[rinselberg]

To simulate one of my clients, I went to an Internet cafe and sat in front of a Windows PC with a broadband connection. I used the domain name that I have established to request some mp3 format audio files using the IE browser. For each access, the file has to complete its download before the music starts playing.

The download time was 100 seconds for a 3.5 MB mp3 file; 105 seconds for a 4.0 MB file and 130 seconds for a 4.9 MB file.

Here's an example.. the 4.0 MB file:
http://rinselberg.dyndns.org:8000/baghdadbob.mp3

I set up my server on a desktop Mac with the Intel architecture, running Mac OS X on 1 GB of RAM. I may eventually have a broadband connection on the server side, but at present it is DSL. I ran the SPEEDTEST.NET benchmark and it showed me:



This activity is just for fun and I am more or less restricted to freeware (free software) solutions. I established my domain name with the lowest (free of charge) tier of the DynDNS service. My Web server is Abyss X1.

The only applications that were running on top of Mac OS X during these benchmark runs were Abyss X1 and the DynDNS Update daemon.

What might be done to speed up the download times for my clients, aside from new server hardware or a broadband connection?

Are there software parameters that could be modified?

I'm just getting started and this is my first venture into networking and Web server implementation.

Is there a freeware (or even a "cheapware") solution that would enable me to "stream" the mp3 files instead of forcing my client to wait for the entire file to download before the music starts playing?

I am doing this to add some humor to the posts that I submit almost every day to certain Internet message boards or online forums: It's not a music sharing service or an online jukebox or anything like that.

I am posting this in hopes that someone here will point me in a useful direction so that I don't get bogged down with wide-ranging search engine queries or plodding through reams of online software documentation to discover the answer(s).

To read more about how I got to this point, please see Stuck--trying to take the first "baby step" with Abyss X1.

Thanks again for your interest.

[AbyssUnderground]

Your upload speed is the limiting factor. This is the maximum speed at which you can send data to people viewing the site. The higher the value, the faster it is capable of sending data. You have around 400Kbps, which is about 45KB/s.

One thing you can do is re sample the mp3's to a lower bit rate, although this will degrade the audio quality.

Apart from that, simply getting a package with a higher upload speed is your best bet. It can get quite expensive to do this though depending on the ISP.
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Andy (AbyssUnderground) (previously The Inquisitor)
www.abyssunderground.co.uk

[rrinc]

Maybe something like this is what you're looking for?
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-Blake | New Server :D
SaveTheInternet
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[pkSML]