[Icecast] IceCast broadcast calculations

[Scott Winterstein]

Hello all reading this. I am new to the list as a way to learn a few things
about IceCast and I am fuzzy on. I am not a total noob to media, or serving
it. I have even developed, setup configured, a media server, or two, and
many many dedicated, or otherwise hosting servers, and by either blind luck
and chance found them to actually work once I was done. I am Scott,  am in
the process of building a linux IceCast server. I hope you don't mind my
walk down memory lane but It pertains to the quandary.

Back in the day ( late1997 ish) I was developing, some of the first early
proof of concepts of streaming media servers, and streaming websites. We
had 3 parts to the early versions of these media systems. We were also
already developing, ideas for a streaming solutions our supplier of
hardware and software was ViewCast's early Osprey, who's hardware consisted
in large, and supplied through companies acquired by PolyCom. PolyCom's
Hardware/Software solutions through acquisitions of many players at the
time, were alot of the same stuff, their motivation of course, to produce
early Teleconference products, and snap up major stakes in Streaming Media.

One box was an encoding server that was used to encode the video/audio into
digital format. The second was a server with a T1 internet connection and
dedicated IP, the encoded video/audio files were stored. The third was a
IIS webserver same T1 internet connection but different IP. We were working
on early ideas, and developing caching servers too.

I would via 1 single live (60 min. 548 kbps @24 fps) instance  in a basic
player of shock wave flash code embedded in a webpage, broadcasting without
issue that single data rate, and don't recall ever requiring a calculation
involving per viewer being needed to calculate bandwidth requirements, as
it is a single instance of one data rate correct? As I recall the only
variable required was the effective data rate of the broadcast stream. So
as shown above you need at least a 548 kbps connection at both ends of the
Broadcast to watch it with no issues, by 1000's at the same time,
and don't see how a per person suddenly came into the picture
in broadcasting media. Only if you had say, 30 live (60 min. 548 kbps @24
fps) instances of that same video/audio sources broadcasting
in embedded players at the same exact time in different webpages to 30
separate viewers on the same T1, would you need to use a calculation, to
determine that at least 1048576kbps bandwidth would be required. Maybe I
forgot something, or these people providing IceCast broadcasting host
connections, are charging people right, and making very little profits, or
they are raping people using their services to broadcast their stream?? IDK?

I said all that to ask this. One of my reasons for considering my own
IceCast server to stream, is the outlandish pricing of the IceCast hosts.
Can someone tell me my calculations that I have to use I mean by my
calculations, one broadcast stream at 128kbps would require 128kbps of my
current internet connection, not dependent upon how many listeners I have.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Scott Winterstein

EMAIL: scottsdeskcpu at yahoo.om
WEBSITE: www.ScottsDesk.net <http://www.scottsdesk.net/>
FACEBOOK: ScottsDesk <https://www.facebook.com/scottsdesk>
DEVELOPMENT: DLRADIO <http://www.scottsdesk.net/dlradio/>
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