about big flv files

[Adrian Otto]

On Jun 16, 2008, at 3:15 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> In message  
> <7ab169e90806160307w778fb06ay1eb92b19d6e17ad1 at mail.gmail.com>, "chen
>  xiaoyong" writes:
>
>> Hey guys,
>>  I'm thinking about big flv files in varnishd. Now,many web sites  
>> support
>> video, Typically,  these files more than 5M.
>
> There is no intrinsic limit on object size in varnish, but it is not
> particular geared towards such use.  The major stumbling block is that
> Varnish will fetch the entire file from the backend before starting
> transmission to the client.

Have you considered allowing a configuration for streaming a file to  
a client while it's being fetched from the backend server? Upon the  
first successful sending of the complete file to the client, it can  
then be stored in the cache for subsequent serving. Also, it would be  
helpful to be able to limit the number of backend connections that  
are streaming in this way so that it's possible to prevent swamping  
the origin server when an object is very popular. Perhaps if the  
limit is reached, it could reply with a 502 Server Busy reply. In  
addition, I think this would be a fantastic addition.

>>  I don't konw what's better ..  split file in function  
>> fetch_straight ?
>> or do nothing , set up tcp parameters?
>
> I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here ?

It sounds like he's trying to optimize download performance.