Need a quick overview of stream hosts

[mikemania]

So currently, I am streaming in your everyday setup of winamp + icecast + radiotoolbox. Obviously, my home connection won't provide the necessary bandwidth I need, so I am interested in purchasing dedicated hosting for streaming. Now I understand all the prices, slots, and bandwidth stuff and that different companies may have different ways on running things, but I just need a simple overview of how this is going to work.

So when I purchase the hosting, will I still be running Icecast on my computer or will it be running on their servers? And will I still be using my home bandwidth to do this?

Also, I have an existing domain name and an existing web host that I really like. If I want my stream URLs to have my domain in them, how will that work? Will I have to get web hosting from stream hosting company?

thanks!

[Jay]

You can do either, the hosting company can relay your stream from your local server or you can send the audio directly to their servers.

Either way, unless you put your broadcasting client on another server you will continue using your bandwidth for at least 1 listener (the stream host's server).

No, this would be impossible, however if you want to do something like that you can point a subdomain of your domain to their server. (i.e. stream.mydomain.com)