[Icecast] load constraints

[Karl Heyes]

On Sat, 2005-05-21 at 07:26, Daniel Ballenger wrote:
> On 5/20/05, Dan Stowell <danstowell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Iain,
> > 
> > It's a simple answer:
> > 
> > > For example, if a box on a 128kbps upload connection is
> > > serving a 64Kbps stream (and not audio-on-demand) - is it limited to two
> > > connections
> > 
> > Yes it is.

you'll be hard pushed to get 2 streams out of it as well, due to the
additional protocol overhead.

> > > or is icecast somehow more efficient?
> > 
> > No - icecast can't work miracles! The underlying technology of the
> > internet (the way it is at present, at least) only allows a packet of
> > information to be sent to one computer, so icecast needs to replicate
> > each chunk of data for every client it wants to broadcast to.
> What about multicast routing?  Doesn't this achieve that?  Just curious :)

multicast would allow for distribution to many, however several things
need to occur before that can work, icecast needs to support it, players
need to support it and the networks people have need to support it
(think NAT and/or firewall).

karl