[gotrootdude]

Exploring possibilities on streaming audio from website, any hints from the pros?
Is Icecast the cheaper answer for streaming mp3's. Any freeware that ya'll may have used in the past that may ease the burden?

[gotrootdude]

Here's an idea for you smart guys. Live streaming audio is very expensive due to bandwidth. Here's a possible solution to the bandwidth problem.

1. Server gets request for audio stream, downloads small client that acts as a peer2peer server for concurrent downloads to the PC requesting the audio. If the server cannot meet bandwidth requirements of user, user's client seeks other client's peer2peer servers to grab any missing packets that the original server cannot provide fast enough.
Each client download can include a encoded list of IP's from concurrent users to use as additional sources for the stream.

Any idea's, comments? Media must be cached in order for this to work, a small ramdisk can be set up by client application in order to cache and prefetch.


Of course, user has to be notified somehow that his use of the streaming client is contingent on some use of his upload speed, and client server should uninstall automatically on disconnect.