Linux and icecast, and well. . . . fallbacks :S

michael_hunt · Post by **michael_hunt** » Sun Jan 30, 2005 3:45 pm

hi everyone.

I have spent ages setting up a website, and when i say ages, i mean a good 4 months making this thing, and my boss has said were not allowed it. Anyway. . . . . end storey is. I didnt sign over my radio station so im taking it back,so this means i have to find myself a new server. . . . well it just so happens on our dj's is running a linux server, i believe is Fedora Core.

Well, bassically, what i want to do is set it up to work with sam2 broadcaster and have the server set up for a fallback stream when the primary source is lost but when it comes back, then all listeners are put back on the main stream. is there any tutorail for this? also the server will be on a tiny 1mb internet connection, so also some way of unicast or somthing along those lines would be cool.

anyone got any ideas?

thanks in advance

Michael Hunt

Post by **Jay** » Sun Jan 30, 2005 4:17 pm

i am not sure if icecast is capable of this. I just myself added this features to Steamcast, it's still experimental so you can use that if you like. Will only work with mp3 at this time though.

michael_hunt · Post by **michael_hunt** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:44 am

cool, thanks. does streamcast allow for unicast, because of our tiny upload we need a way to have more listeners.

Post by **Jay** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 7:53 am

steamcast is unicast and no different to the end listener.

michael_hunt · Post by **michael_hunt** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:21 am

so, our server would send out 1 stream, and people would just get that instead of the whole 500 listeners getting a stream directly from the server, or how ever it works. . . . sorry, i dont know much about unicast

Post by **Jay** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 5:16 pm

unicast is a single stream for each listener connected. This is the method Steamcast, Icecast and SHOUTcast all use. It is the most bandwidth consuming method but ensure a higher level of quality.

Lane · Post by **Lane** » Mon May 16, 2005 8:19 am

Michael Hunt is confusing unicast and multicast. Unicast means one listener per stream. Multicast means multiple listeners per stream.

Multicast only works on a particular ip range, so that it stays within an intranet (basically). I don't know of any audio streamer that can do multicast, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Post by **Jay** » Mon May 16, 2005 2:14 pm

well the problem truely is multicast is not available to everyone on the internet. So in effect, you would be cutting out audience if you went that route.

Windows Media Server is capable of multicast and I believe there are a couple of clone shoutcast servers that do it as well, but it has no real way of catching on due to the limited availability of multicast on the internet.