[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] need some advice on choosing a cdn to use with w3

I’m quickly getting to the point where my rtmp servers are overloading and I need to move them to a cdn. I have more than enough storage 120TB on my combined nas’, but I am at times maxing out my servers net connections.

I started out by going to vps.net as their pricing was so low. At first I went with their akamai offering only to find out that it does not include live streaming. Every single person I talked to, at least 3 sales and 2 tech support people at vps.net said it would do live streaming, only to find out after I purchased the service that it does not, but would cost an extra $100/Tb to add the service. Believe it or not, I actually had one person there tell me that akamai was not really designed for live streaming. This completely blew my mind because I know the opposite is true.

To make matters even worse, it turns out there are no stats available on individual cp setups. That part is not the fault of vps.net but more from akamai as the setup is different than normal for them. Still, it means I could not offer my customers ‘real’ stats, which would lead to even worse problems for me.

I was then told that highwinds was better suited for live streaming. So while I waited for my refund I started reading through the members only forums on their site. Needless to say it is filled with huge amounts of people complaining about some pretty serious problems with highwinds. Tech support does not offer ‘real’ solutions as the complains seem to revolve around inherent problems in the highwinds cdn.

Now, I honestly don’t even know where to turn. Even with the very cheap pricing, going with highwinds leaves me the impression that it would be a huge step backwards for me as I already use multiple dedicated servers in my setup. (rtmp, database servers, http servers).

I’m really curious to find out from others here what service you would suggest going with. I do not really know of other cdn’s out there.

My needs are pretty simple:
1. live rtmp streaming is a must — all my clients are church’s who broadcast multiple services a week that average 1-2 hours in length.

I bring that time up because each file is approx 300-600Mb in size. This makes the amount of data moved huge compared to most sites. As I deal with smaller church’s, the idea of paying $250 per Tb is just plain to high for them. (6-12cents/video viewed x thousands of views a month).

2. on demand rtmp streams. Obviously I archive all streams, and prefer to deliver them over rtmp vs. progressive download.

3. object/css/js caching for wordpress

4. Per customer per file detailed statistics are important to me.

Every customer likes to see exactly how many times each live and pov video are watched, and how long etc… not to mention it makes understanding their bill easier.

5. easy integration with w3 total cache

Well that’s it, my requirements in a nutshell.

p.s.
I do have the option of continuing what I do now. It only costs me $75/Tb right now should I continue adding servers to the datacenter. Add in $65/month for the wowza software and my costs are contained. However, I am not much of an expert at all when it comes to load balancing multiple wowza servers. I have 2 balanced so far, but the complexity of adding multiple servers to the mix gets a little overwhelming.

So, if you were ‘stuck’ in my situation where would you turn?

thanks for any input given.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/