[Icecast] bandwidth calculation

[Karl Heyes]

On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 19:51, carlo wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> my question:
> 
> how is the exact formula to calculate bandwidth needed to upstream at
> given bitrate to a certain number of simultaneous listeners ?
> 
>  
> 
> is it simply BANDWIDTH (bps) = BITRATE (bps) X LISTENERS ?

That is the approximate figure, the bitrate as listed via the codecs
don't account for protocol overhead, and the likes of mp3 tend to
under-specify the actual rate (eg 56k is like 60k really).  So the above
equation is really 'at least' that.

Obviously variable bitrate streams make it harder to work out.

karl.