Broadwave broadcasting limitations

[DeeRoy]

Dear people,

 

excuse me if this topic has been covered, I'll expect that I'll be duly chastised and this post/thread will be removed.

 

I've found your forum and software whilst searching for requirements for a small NPO community radio station that I do tech support for.

 

They would like to stream their broadcast to the world online... online world, even...

 

Whilst not having researched such a project before, it's my belief that their uplink, as provided by their ISP, will not be sufficient. I'm under this impression from also believing that *each* listener is a separate connection to their broadcasting PC. This to me means that the pipe will fill up pretty quickly.

 

Would there be a thread here that puts into perspective the limits of such ambitions. I.e. How many listeners could be provided for from a standard end point (non commercial Internet Service, with a 256 or 512kbps uplink speed).

 

I'm sure the sales section for the BroadWave software will maybe give me some dollar indication of how many clients I can have listening when x amount of server is bought/rented but I'd definitely appreciate if these ballpark numbers to given as well. eg. a $50/mth server rental will provide enough connections for 500 listeners... ?

 

I essentially told the Station Manager that I doubted he had the facility with his current setup to provide for more than a few listeners. Real internet availability would require a rented server solution, the costs and details of which I am now researching.

 

 

Many thanks to you (all) for the time to read and, if I am even luckier, answer.

 

cheers

 

Dee

[KenA]

Hello Dee,

 

Yes, you are limited by your connection's upload capacity, so work out the ideal bitrate you want to give the listeners and divide that into the upload bitrate. In practice, solutions like Broadwave are great for a smallish number of attached listeners, but anything more than "several" needs something like shoutcast.

 

In that option, you stream from your studio to a third-party streaming server, to which the many listeners connect. The third party has more bandwdith than you, so can handle the many connections. Usually you pay a subscription based on the maximum number of listeners you anticipate.

 

I'd recommend using a third-party service initially to gauge demand, before implementing your own Shoutcast server. But even before that, try Broadwave as a "proof of concept" solution as it is very good, until you hit the bandwidth or connection limits.