Iptables Media Server Performance

Iptables Media Server Performance

[Rudi Starcevic]

Hi,

I need to implement a firewall for a linux machine whose primary task is 
a media server.
That is a web site with loads of video: mpeg, avi and wmv formats.

I have everything working well and am very happy.
However I am wondering if there is anything I should consider with 
regard to higher performance.

I have an idea of how much I should try and squeeze out per machine and 
would appreciate any feedback.

I want to ensure the machine is not overloaded resulting in slow video 
streaming/downloading performance.

Currently for:

1) 4000 members this machine has about
2) 200 users at any one time
3) which make about 1500 simultaneous connections
4) using about 75 MBps
5) on a machine with MemTotal: 905336 kB

Right now there are 230 connected users and rising.

When it gets to an average of 250 I'm thinking that is about as much as 
I can get
from this machine and will add more with DNS round robin.

Tasks:
a) www server
- tcp port 80
b) port-forwarding/NAT for a Microsoft Media Server
- tcp port 1755
- udp port 1755
- tcp port 554
- udp port 554
- udp port 5004
- udp port 5005
c) port-forwarding/NAT for ftp
tcp port 21 DNAT --to 192.168.0.10:21

Your input would be much appreciated.
Does it everything look OK to you? Or am I tripping out?

Thanks
Regards Rudi.

Re: Iptables Media Server Performance

[Christian Theil]

> from this machine and will add more with DNS round robin.

DNS round robin is probably one of the poorest solutions you can pick. 
You will likely get unfair loadbalancing. Remember that clients will likely
cache DNS entries.

There are other solutions which will provide better loadbalancing. Linux
virtual server or sleipner or something. 
 
> Does it everything look OK to you? Or am I tripping out?

You might want to look into to QoS/traffic control to put your
bandwidth to better use (if you are not allready doing this). The
place to start is the linux advanced routing howto.

/christian.