Bandwidth

I am not sure were to post this, so I fugured he was as good as any. I want to build a web hosting/web page on the internet. I want to user a system outside of my home, I want to place it on someone else computer so they can worry aboput security and all that stuff. The web side is as follows. I want to stream audio from point ( A ) MP3 144 HZ 16 BIT to my server, then have people turn into my server/webpage and click on a button to listen live. So what I am trying to figure out is ( A ) If I figure 500 people will listen at one time, how much band width would I need, ( 2 ) is there anyplace that you get rent bandwith for a server. I would assume that I would need to buy a server from the same people. ( 3 ) And what is the usual price of bandwidth these days. ( 4 ) is there a formula that I could use to figure the bandwidth vs. listeners ratio. Thank you... Kory

well it depend on compression.
If it's 128kbps for this stream, you can get 8 listeners for 1Mbps.

So, you will need 62,5 Mbps of bandwidth for 500 listeners.
Dreamhost is mainly a shared based web hosting, you can't host a live audio stream on it (even just for 2 listeners).


For this amount of bandwidth, you should consider getting a dedicated server with 100Mbps bandwidth (or 2x50, one in US, another one in europe, because in streaming, distance may affect quality sometimes).

http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html has prices and limits.

One way to convert would be to look at file sizes in MB divided by playing time. Times number of people at once.

In reply to:

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For this amount of bandwidth, you should consider getting a dedicated server with 100Mbps bandwidth (or 2x50, one in US, another one in europe, because in streaming, distance may affect quality sometimes).

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Or go to a company that specializes in audio and/or video streaming, where you pay for the amount of bandwidth you need, and nothing more. You don't have to host anything, or configure anything but your streaming software.

One such company is http://streamguys.com, which we use for our live audio feeds of my two weekly radio shows. The on-demand stuff is handled here.


Peace,
Gene Steinberg
Co-Host, The Paracast
http://www.theparacast.com

and please do consider that the bandwidth may vary in a shared server

go for a dedicated box or a streaming service as gene suggested, anything else will quickly become frustrating.

these wont be as cheap as shared hosting, but you get what you pay for.