Streaming Audio Meadia

[wbrown338]

Greetings:

 

Do you host any type of streaming audio content?

 

Thanks.

[TCH-Rob]

Can you stream on shared servers. Yes, to a point. It eats up bandwidth fast and depending how often accessed could be a resource hog in a shared environment. You could try the dedicated server route if you wanted but obviously it is a little more costly. And you would need to be the copyright holder of the audio in question or have permission to use it.

Edited June 18, 2004 by TCH-Rob

[MikeJ]

Just to clarify, you can stream content via HTTP on shared servers (via various methods of embedding media in pages, etc...). We do not run, nor allow, streaming media servers on shared servers, however, nor do we have any public media server available.

[You Are a Gift]

I am getting ready to transfer my site over to TCH. I am planning on adding audio and video clips on my site, with several 2-5 minute clips and possibly a 15-min video clip. How do I figure out how much bandwidth will be used? Is it per-minute? Size of file? number of times viewed? Is there a calculation or rule of thumb to use?

[boxturt]

I believe you can tell by file size. As has been previously mentioned though you need to be careful of 'hogging' resources on a shared server.

[TCH-Andy]

Hi,

 

Basically file size multiplied by number of viewings = bandwidth used.

[Wilexa]

I agree with Andy!

 

Although others may have found different, my personal experience tells me that if you use the allowed methods (i.e. straight HTTP transfer), and your visitors are reasonably spaced out (10 at a time, for instance), you will hit your bandwidth limit faster than you will use "too many" CPU and memory resources. The CPU load for a straight HTTP request seems to be very small compared to a true "streaming server" that is dedicated to serving many, many users at once. The servers here are very fast and can dish out audio and video clips with ease. My audio site is averaging about 1GB (on about 200 vistors) per day with no problems.

 

I have also found that some users will download a file more than once and many abandon a clip before it is complete. Even so, if just 50 users a day download a complete 10MB file, your monthly bandwith will add up to 15GB/month just for that one file.

(10MB * 50 users * 30 days).

 

Problems arise when 100 people try to get that same 10MB file all at once. Tough on a shared server. So if you are serving a narrow audience, you should be fine with shared server. If you are trying to appeal to a wide (and large) audience, you should probably consider a dedicated server.

 

 

-- Dave

 

Just my opinions. I do not speak for TCH.