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[papaja]

Streaming requirements

Hello,
I would like to buy/rent dedicated server for audio streaming. I know little about this topic so I'll ask few questions and make some assumption. Please correct me when I'm wrong.
Is there a rule about minimum hardware that I'd have to have for some combination of listeners and bitrate? For example: 1GHz and 1GB of RAM for 100 listeners at 128kbps. If there is no rule, or it is complicated to calculate all combinations, please list 3 - 5 standard combinations of listeners (100, 500, 1000...) and bitrate and hardware need to support it.
Bitrate and number of listeners determine my bandwidth needs. In the previous case it would be 100 * 128 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1024 / 1024 = 31,6GB to get needed bandwidth in GB per month. Am I right?

[cristibighea]

Your calculations are off, you may want to use this tool: http://shoutcount.mcproductions.eu/.





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[FastServ]

The actual hardware is not important. Any half way decent P4 or better can suit your needs.
What really matters is the network connection. Since you plan on alot of listeners, you should be looking at an unmetered bandwidth package such as 25Mbps, 50Mbps, 75Mbps, ect. You have to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the bandwidth is dedicated, e.g. allocated on a 1:1 ratio. "Shared" unmetered bandwidth will cause all sorts of trouble with streaming.
Trying to deal with Gb/mo on such a large scale is going to be a huge headache...with unmetered you can never go over and get hit with a huge bill at the end of a busy month.
For example -
25Mbps line can handle (25,000/128) or 195 listeners.
a 50Mbps line can handle (50,000/128) or 390 listeners.
If you plan on hosting other stream bitrates then you need to do the math accordingly... for instance if you have 100 listeners at 24k on a 50Mbps line, that takes up the bandwidth of 20 128k streams...





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[papaja]

Quote:



Originally Posted by cristibighea


Your calculations are off, you may want to use this tool: ....


I see that my calculations are way off but I do not understand why. Can you explain? What consumes so much traffic?

[garysimat]

lots of concurrent listeners consumes more traffic. The less concurrent listeners the less traffic, the more concurrent listeners the less traffic. Also the bitrate determines a big part of that, the lower the bitrate the less traffic, the higher the bitrate the higher the traffic.





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On top of the quality and stability of the network connection, it helps to have your server in a location central to where the majority of your listeners come from.
If your listeners are spread out across the world, you'll find it beneficial to go with a provider who utilizes a backbone with good international connectivity.

If you look at the costs to having a dedicated server PLUS the costs of your uplink (your servers internet connection speed) you will find it cost prohibitive compared to most reputable stream hosting providers.
If you do the research, and do your math correctly, you will save money by going with a stream hosting provider. Take in to count your dedicated servers bandwidth restriction and uplink speed. Is it 10mbps, 100mbps 1gbps?
How many simultanious listeners does your station receive? If it's only up to a couple hundred, you could save a lot of money. For example, if you station receives spikes in listeners at certain times, you should consider a "Bandwidth based" plan. Otherwise if you will always maintain a strong listener base, then you should consider a "Concurrent Listener based" plan.
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Last edited by anon-e-mouse : 12-27-2008 at 02:31 PM.

[Cyborg--]

Yes your calculations are way off. Here is the good one :
100 * (128 / 8) * 3600 * 24 * 30 = 3.9 TB
users * (bitrate / 8) to convert in bytes * duration / 1024 (MB) / 1024 (GB) /1024 (TB)
Personally I prefer using unmetered servers for streaming usage, most provide close to 10 TB of bandwith.
Cyb.





__________________
Guillaume Ferland
President - Ustream Incwww.ustream.ca

Bandwidth???

The hosting providers that I have seen are sloppy about listing their "bandwidth" limitations. They state such things as "5GB" which is not bandwidth, it is an amount of data. Is that per second? Per month? What??? You can't assume what it means, it must be stated explicitly.
Bandwidth is data / unit time. So be careful to find out exactly what figures they are stating so that you know what you are buying.

yes if getting a server unmetered will definitely work best to keep away from overages
if you are going to use a streaming provider do check around on the radiotoolbox and the shoutcast forums and talk to other streamers as to the providers reliability because many do oversell their servers and pray that listener levels dont peek too high during the day then your listeners will suffer buffers
ask for a test even from them





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[coolvserver]

Quote:



Originally Posted by papaja


I see that my calculations are way off but I do not understand why. Can you explain? What consumes so much traffic?


Here is the calculation for converting port speed 1mbps to total monthly data transfer measured by GB:
1mbps = 1 megabit per second
= 60 megabits per minutes (1 minutes = 60 seconds)
= 3600 megabits per hour (1 hour = 60 minutes)
= 86400 megabits per day (1 day = 24 hours)
= 2592000 megabits per month (1 month = 30 days)
= 324000 megabytes per month (1 byte = 8 bits)
= 324 gegabytes per month (1 gegabyte = 1000 megabytes roughly)
= 324 GBs per month ( GB = GegaByte )





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