Advice needed - to rent a server or not??

[beauchampy]

Hello all, first time poster here!

I'm an IT tech at a school with a background in audio engineering. Having setup the school's internet radio station (currently internal network only!), our presenters (adult) would like to stream a show publicly continuously for 72 hours for a charity fund raising event!

Currently we are using a Mac running Nicecast.

We have a 200mbit fibre connection with only one public IP address.

Requirements:
-A very very stable streaming server which needs to maintain up time of at least 72 hours.
-Connection capacity for up to 300 listeners.
-The ability to play the stream from a player embedded on our website.

I see two options..
1. Host the server here using Nicecast.
2. Rent a server and stream to it using Nicecast.


Questions:
- I like the idea of option 2 as it means all the connections aren't handled by an i5 Mac mini with 4gb ram.. Or is that plenty?! I don't know. How much horsepower do you get from hiring a server?
- I know we have a massive amount of bandwith at school, however the single IP thing means the server would sit behind a firewall and we would forward the streaming port to it, we wouldn't be able to put the server in a DMZ or give it a public IP. That ok?
- Is Nicecast a professional enough package to handle 300 connections? Am I being naive in attempting to use this as the sole piece of streaming software?
- What do you guys do for a fail safe incase your server falls over?
- Should I just hire a sever!? Which ones are any good!?

Thoughts greatly appreciated. Sorry about the disjointed rambling!

 

[sojic]

Shortly: I like "in house" solutions... but sometimes outsourced service has advantages.

In your case, I think it is good solution to rent a server. Nicecast is OK to stream.

If you have local streaming, you might set it public (setting DMZ), and configure the rented server to "relay" the local stream.

 

[Support]

Hello all, first time poster here!

Welcome!

I'm an IT tech at a school with a background in audio engineering. Having setup the school's internet radio station (currently internal network only!), our presenters (adult) would like to stream a show publicly continuously for 72 hours for a charity fund raising event!

Currently we are using a Mac running Nicecast.

We have a 200mbit fibre connection with only one public IP address.

Requirements:
-A very very stable streaming server which needs to maintain up time of at least 72 hours.
-Connection capacity for up to 300 listeners.
-The ability to play the stream from a player embedded on our website.

I see two options..
1. Host the server here using Nicecast.
2. Rent a server and stream to it using Nicecast.


Questions:
- I like the idea of option 2 as it means all the connections aren't handled by an i5 Mac mini with 4gb ram.. Or is that plenty?! I don't know. How much horsepower do you get from hiring a server?

Your Mac would be more than powerful enough. Streaming itself isn't very cpu intensive.

- I know we have a massive amount of bandwith at school, however the single IP thing means the server would sit behind a firewall and we would forward the streaming port to it, we wouldn't be able to put the server in a DMZ or give it a public IP. That ok?

This is the issue. Bandwidth. Your 200 mbit connection again would be fine for you trying to handle 300 listeners. You didn't specify the bitrate (quality) you plan to use but we presume 128 kbps which is good enough for music. You would need to organise port forwarding to the server from within your network. Your IT department should be able to help you with this.

- Is Nicecast a professional enough package to handle 300 connections? Am I being naive in attempting to use this as the sole piece of streaming software?

Nicecast is awesome and should easily handle 300+ connections.

- What do you guys do for a fail safe incase your server falls over?

Icecast servers have whats called a "Fallback mount" which means you can have a backup "Auto DJ" stream just in case your source drops out. Unfortunately Shoutcast (and Nicecast) servers don't have this.

- Should I just hire a sever!? Which ones are any good!?

Its up to you really. Setting it up and running it yourself might be an interesting learning curve for you and your school. If you wanted to host with us we would recommend a Pay As You Go server as you only pay for the bandwidth you need (72 hours) and can have up to 500 listener capacity.

Hope this helps 8)

 

[beauchampy]

Thanks for the useful advice! Will get an account running with you guys a month prior to the show

 

[Support]

Thanks for the useful advice! Will get an account running with you guys a month prior to the show

Great, and you're welcome!