Mike’s blog [ Mike Duguid ]

I’ve been looking at various server solutions for implementing realtime chat /realtime games, with a flash front end.

Rather than using am inelegant polling php solution , I thought I’d look into something more efficient and quick responding.

Normally I’d look straight to Adobe Media Server, but a) it’s heavy on server resources and b) the dev version has a piddling 10 simultaneous connections (£3k+ for a full licence). As the project I’m looking at implementing is a shoestring affair that just ain’t happening..

I’ve now looked at a few solutions:

Electroserver, Smartfox basic, Palabre

Electroserver – has lots of great features, is cheap, has streaming audio and video. Unfortunately the documentation and examples are a complete shambles – some are AS3 some AS2, and the examples won’t recompile without masses of errors. Auto generated class docs are always a bad sign (I find them completely pointless without some examples and explanation – papervision is the current worst offender). The various bits of information needed to get a working server installation are scattered randomly amongst the forum, different sections of the documentation..basically far too much effort to get going when compared to the next offering.

Smartfox is similar in nature, a java based socket server (currently without any audio or video streaming features but penned in for release soon). The documentation and examples for this are extensive, well organised and above all – work out of the box. Memory use at idle is half that of Electroserver (30mb v 60mb) which is good (though will probably match after it has added AV streaming features).

Palabre is an obscure python based device with not much in the way of docs or examples but it’s a far simpler device and doesn’t need much really – this installs easily if you know you’re way around an ssh prompt. It uses hardly any memory so suitable for slim vps installs. This doesn’t have any advanced features so it’s only really suitable for very simple applications, but an option nonetheless.

Tags: actionscript, chat, electroserver, games, palabre, smartfox, socket

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Web Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.