[icecast] bit/bytes

Sun Feb 29 12:16:55 UTC 2004

Hi Goeff,

Thanks for your precisions. You wrote: "Internet connections are also
expressed in bits, or kilobits, not Kilobytes"; then I guess a connection of
1Mb is also 1 megaBITS and NOT megaBYTES. There is something I don't
understand; how are affording small radios that have up to 1000 concurrent
listeners a 128Mb connection? Is there any magical solution I am not aware
of?

Thanks for clarifying this topic!

MAX

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-icecast at xiph.org [mailto:owner-icecast at xiph.org] On Behalf Of
Geoff Shang
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:59 PM
To: icecast at xiph.org
Subject: Re: [icecast] bit/bytes

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, MacSym wrote:

> A 128K stream is a 128 KiloBITS (NOT kiloBYTES) per second stream; am I
> right?

Right.

> Is a 512k internet connection a 512 kiloBITS or 512 kiloBYTES
> connection?

Internet connections are also expressed in bits, or kilobits, not
kilobytes.  In this sense, calling it a 512k connection is actually wrong,
as this implies kilobytes, not kilobits.  But everyone seems to do it.

> 128 KiloBITS = 16 KiloBYTES (8 bits = 1 byte). I am wondering if a 512k
> connection (upload and download) could THEORITICALLY handle 4 (512/128) or
> 32 (512/16) 128k streams?

Unfortunately it's 4, not 32.

> I am confused because I often read that to calculate the potential number
of
> listeners with a given connection; you just divide the connection speed by
> the stream bit rate... is it true? In this case, how is doing SomaFM to
> handle 4000 listeners at 128k?? Do they have a 512 MB connection???

I guess they must.

Geoff.

<p>--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
icecast project homepage: http://www.icecast.org/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'icecast-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.