LAN for VIDEO Transmission

HI,

I've been given a task of setting up a lan that will transport video from the server to clients.What is supposed to happen is that videos will be downloaded from the net to the server and distributed to clients on the net work.Nothing much will be done on this lan but transport videos to and from the server.I've never done this before but i know that videos are alwayz big file and so a I can not use the some cards,switches,etc.What I would liked to be helped with is what is the best cards, switches and what ever else would be needed to set up such a network,coz I would like tos setup a lab with 1 Server running windows 2003 server and the clients all running windows xp pro.The specs of the pc's would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Your first question is will the video be streamed across the network to the clients and played as it is being recieved, or will the video files be downloaded to the clients up front and then played. If you are doing streaming then your key issues are things like latency and perhaps QOS. If you're just downloading the video files then all you really need is a file server based LAN that is fast enough to transfer big files in a reasonable time.
I assume you're wanting streaming video though. If so, your next question is what format/technology will be used to stream the video. There are several, and each will involve a different load on your LAN as they have varying compression efficiencies. Start with some research on these issues and then consider the performance you need from your network to achieve it.

The video files will firt have to be downloaded to ther server and then the clients will stream from the internal server and not straight from the internet.
What I would like to know is what type of equipment to use ie GB card or normal 10/100 card,Gb switches,etc.

You've made it clear that the videos will be downloaded first to your internal server before being accessed by your clients. Now depending on whether your clients are going to be downloading whole video files to their machines before viewing, or whether they will stream from your server your bandwidth requirements will vary.

If you're streaming at say 600kbit (high quality) and don't have a silly amount of clients connecting at the same time, 100Mb should be OK. Obviously if you've got Gb in place or can afford it, get it. Even if you decide to go 100Mb you will probably want your server to have a Gb link to your switch backbone.

If instead of streaming, your clients are downloading the entire videos before viewing, and you have them all doing it at the same time, you may want to consider Gb ethernet.

As for machine specs, your server is really the main consideration.

At least a Gb card, lots of RAM - at least 2Gb and as much as you can afford. Nice fast hard disks, SCSI if you can afford it or SATA RAID 0, if you're not bothered about redundancy or have a good backup system in place.

As for the clients, anything with a decent 32MB+ 3D Card with at least 256MB RAM should do.

I'm assuming you're purchasing new hardware so for the Server a 3GHz + processor and 2GhZ+ for the clients should be relatively inexpensive although you will be able to get away with less.