Shoutcast Streaming Bandwidth

tomupton · 15th December 2008

Hi All,

Ok a bit confused here.... The situation is i think ive found the dedicated server i have been looking for.

The server comes with 4,000GB bandwidth per month.

The question is....

How many listeners could i have on the server at any one time streaming at 96k? I dont want to exceed any bandwidth allowences etc.

The server would also be running AutoDj to take that into consideration.

Im asking this question, and someone explained to me the other day i would only require about 200GB per month to cope with 300 listeners at anyone time.....

Regards
Tom

JamieBeeston · 15th December 2008

You can have as many as you want at any one time (CPU / RAM Dependant) it's not about how many at once, it's about how long each of them listen for.

Louise · 15th December 2008

We did this last year, and got around 100 + stations
To Be honest it eats bandwidth for breakfast especially if your selling auto DJ, when random people can listen to the music ( make sure you upsell it and charge extra for)

Jamie is right it depends how long they listen for and how many people are at that time for that month

You would have to work it out as an average for that month and monitor it

tomupton · 15th December 2008

Thanks for your advice.

I would say 3 of the stations would have a number of listeners locked in all the time. I presume in theory for AutoDJ if the stream rate was dropped to 64k, this would preserve bandwidth being used etc? But when djs for example are physically playing live on the site streaming at 96k that would be ok?!?

God im so confused!

Hope everyone had a great weekend...

Tom

Louise · 15th December 2008

Hi
Sure i know you from somewhere tom .....
Anyway, the more Rate you let your customers have the more you charge simple as.
If your useing it for yourself then monitor it
( dont forget if they are useing music to upload to the server (autoDJ) to get the proper licences to play music)

Also a niffy tool to add to your stations is an auto request system
You can set up a webpage that pull the list of the music you upload via mysql you click a button and hay poresto it plays the song

The bots runs on mIRC and you can request and talk to the bots see whats playing

tomupton · 15th December 2008

Hi Louise,

Thanks for your message, you quite possibly may have come across me before ive been quite heavily involved with a number of major online radio website, one of which being Phatbeats TV Online Internet Radio, 9 Online Radio Studios with Webcam Streaming 24/7 - this website i have recently completed and was nominated for best website at the urban music awards.

Im planning to use centova as my main streaming platform on the server, this will allow me to monitor usage etc..

The next big question is.... What OS would be recommended to go on the server, also i presume i would not require a Control Panel like Cpanel etc as the server is going to be only used for streaming.

Are there any companies that would be able to setup my server, secure it and make sure everything is working hunky dory?!

Im looking at Poundhost and rapidswitch at the mo? Who do you think would be the better provider? From my understanding they are both based in BlueSquare.....
Regards
Tom

Quote:

Originally Posted by Louise

Hi
Sure i know you from somewhere tom .....
Anyway, the more Rate you let your customers have the more you charge simple as.
If your useing it for yourself then monitor it
( dont forget if they are useing music to upload to the server (autoDJ) to get the proper licences to play music)

Also a niffy tool to add to your stations is an auto request system
You can set up a webpage that pull the list of the music you upload via mysql you click a button and hay poresto it plays the song

The bots runs on mIRC and you can request and talk to the bots see whats playing

othellotech · 15th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomupton

The server comes with 4,000GB bandwidth per month.

Bandwidth is measured in bits-per-second, and I *very* much doubt they'll be providing you, or even have the capacity for 4Tb/s

You mean data-transfer ...

Anyone providing massive amounts of data-transfer for practically nothing is going to be overselling - this will translate into poor/sketchy performance for your radio stations - limiting your listener numbers and their experience of the service - as they'll be "fighting" for resources with all the other customers.

Radio traffic, far more than Web traffic seems to peak at wierd but regular/set times - the station might be on 24/7, but the majority of listeners will be in the same social group and available at the same time, so it can be audience dependant - a quick look at one of ours shows one station gets over 90% of it's traffic between 11.30pm and 3am with minimal traffic other times, so whilst the data-transfer may be relatively low, they hit 40Mb/s+ every night.
- presumably it's only post-pub-closing they're online listening to boom-boom-shake-the-room ...

Listener numbers can be very dependant on the network of your supplier and their connectivity - if most of the listeners are on residential broadband, and you pick a provider in the a'rse-end-of-nowhere with limited/no direct LINX connectivity, then its going to be throttled by connectivity no matter how much data-transfer you get "allocated"

If you have 100 people constant listening to 64Kbs stream you have 6400Kb/s = 6.4Mb/s contant which equates to ~2Tb of transfer month. If you have 400 listeners and they're online for 6 hours/week then you may peak to 25.6Mb/s, but your transfer amount will only be 200Gb