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Technology Stocks : RealNetworks (NASDAQ:RNWK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger Bass who wrote (2108)	3/27/1999 10:24:00 AM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5843

"...as the numbers of users grow, the server-side issues in delivering a lot of this become significant, even though numbers of users are still at most tens of thousands for any one service..." Roger, It seems to me that this issue of scale is the most significant hurdle to overcome. Now that 57 million people have downloaded the Realplayer, what happens if more than two percent of them want to tune into the same event at a time? The Victoria Secret results weren't very pretty, even if BCST and FO tried to put the best possible spin on things. Of course, in the broadcast world, 2% would not be considered much of a hit. Will streaming media remain more of a playback vehicle unsuitable for big simulcasts? What are the server-side issues you refer to in your post? Are you confident they are "server-side issues" rather than network issues? What weighting would you give to the various bottlenecks in scaling streaming media, e.g. connection speed, IP multicasting enabled routers at ISPs? Thanks for your ideas. Sam