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I will have DVD quality (assmume 720 × 576) MP4, normally 720M per hour, thats 1638.4bit per seconds

On Gigabyte Ethernet, it's 1G bit bandwidth, 1 073 741 824 bit, which in theory 655,360 computers in network can play the MP4 smoothly simultaneously, which a very big number, I must be some place wrong, where do I get it wrong.

Also, to support 1G bandwidth, what kind of interface need for server to read the data, which consider:

  • USB 1.1 = 12 Mbit/s
  • Firefire 400 = 400 Mbit/s
  • USB 2.0 = 480 Mbit/s
  • FireWire 800 = 800 Mbit/s
  • USB 3.0 = 5 Gbit/s
  • eSATA = Up to 6 Gbit/s right now as it depend on the internal SATA chip. ref

So any internal harddisk (no RAID), or a USB3 or eSATA hard disk is enough, right?

UPDATE

Allow me to simplified my question:

Q1: For 1 Single Server on Gigabit network (all nodes are Gigabit cards etc), how many client pc can play DVD quality MP4 smoothly?

Q2: If I like to put the data on external storage, what kind of interface should I use.

Thanks

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    You're wrong in your very first sentence. 720 MBytes per hour is 5.76 Gbits per hour, or 1.6 Mbits per second.
    – Steven Monday
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 16:12
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    You need a Gigabit(not Gigabyte) switch, with all devices on the receiving end also having a Gigabit interface and all Ethernet cables should be at least Cat5e for a proper Gigabit network. On the Internal hard disk part, any relatively modern disk should be enough.
    – Kedar
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 16:23
  • Hi @StevenMonday, I do say its "1638.4bit per seconds". I really like to know how many clientscan a single server support in one Gigabit network.
    – Eric Yin
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 17:35
  • @EricYin 1600 bits/sec is 1.6 kbits, not 1.6 Mbits. Steven Monday is correct.
    – Breakthrough
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 17:37

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If you take an hour-long MP4 as a benchmark, this yields a bandwidth of roughly:

(700 MiB * 1024 kiB/MiB) / (60 mins/hour * 60 sec/min) = ~200 kiB/sec

So long as your network/storage media can handle this rate, playback will be instantaneous and you can stream live. You can still play back media at a higher rate than the available bandwidth, but this implies that some buffering has to happen before the media can be played back.

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