If you are an Internet business owner, chances are you may be the proud owner of several Internet websites. On these websites, there may be different types of content - static text, videos, MP3 audio files, and more.

In recent times, a popular file format known as SWF files has been rising in popularity. SWF format files initially started as animated streaming files, and was created by a popular software known as Flash (released by Macromedia). Streaming allows the web visitor to view content without having to wait for the entire file to finish loading. On top of that, SWF allows streaming of vector graphics, which means that the file size is relatively small, and downloading is a breeze.

However, as bandwidth continues to increase, many households now own broadband internet access. With more bandwidth, developers find it easier to release all sorts of content. Soon, content such as MP3 media files (podcasts), streaming videos, etc,. started to take off on the Internet. And guess what format they are released in? The popular SWF file format of course!

But new media SWF files are slightly different from traditional SWF files. Because they contain more contain (hours of video footages in a single file), the file size also tend to be quite large. Instead of 100k to 200k, a video SWF can be several megabytes. The files can be viewed over the Internet, using a modern web browser and a broad band Internet connection.

Streaming is still used for viewing files. Obviously, for the viewing experience to be pleasant enough, the files should be hosted on fast servers with high speed connections.

There are several ways you can ensure that your web visitors are able to stream the content whenever they need to. Your first option, is to look towards paid servers. There are tons of options available. You can choose to purchase a shared package, a VPS (Virtual private server) package, or a dedicated server package.

If you choose to host your files on a shared server, be prepared for a flaky download experience. That's because hundreds of different websites may be hosted on the same server. And that could cause the server to slow down to a crawl at times. If you want more reliable services, you can opt to host your files on a dedicated server. A dedicated server gives you more control over your websites, and only you alone decide what to host on the server. The downside is, one single dedicated server cost a lot more than a shared hosting plan.

Recently, a new website was released, offering free SWF hosting. You can upload your SWF files to the server, and host your HTML web pages elsewhere. Whenever someone attempts to view the content, the HTML web page will load the SWF files from the free server. This will help solve all your bandwidth and hosting issues.