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QTSS on T1 line-how many viewers for live streaming video?

I saw in a previous post that someone said with a QTSS connected to the internet with a T1 line, less than 10 people would be able to watch a live stream.

Is this really true? I have this setup in our offices and figured I could put out a live stream and have lots of people watch.

If this is true, what's the solution to let 100 or 200 people watch live streaming video?

G-5 Quad Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jan 27, 2007 5:36 PM

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4 replies

Jan 28, 2007 11:22 PM in response to Charlie J

What's the bit rate of your stream, and how much of the T1 is available to streaming?

A T1 line runs at 1536 kbps.

If you expect to run 100 streams over that line, and none of the bandwidth is needed for any other service, you get 1536/100 kbps, or ≈ 15kbps. Hardly enough for a video stream - at least of any reasonable quality.

To find how many streams you can support you divide your available bandwidth by your bit rate. If you're running a bit rate of 128kbps (a reasonable figure, you get 1536 / 128, or 12 concurrent streams.

The solution if you want more users is simple - more bandwidth. You might find that colocating your server in a datacenter with much bigger pipes is more cost effective than running fat pipes to a remote office.

Jan 30, 2007 3:32 PM in response to Camelot

Thank you for the reply. It was very helpful.

The T-1 line comes into my building, and at the time I want to broadcast, there would be virtually no other users (weekend). But, I can see now that the T-1 line itself is not the answer.

This is a one-time event, basically. The "server" is simply one of my Macs with OS-10 Server installed. So, it's not an option to locate it in a server farm.

Is there a service where I could direct the streaming video from my OS-10 Server that would then propagate it (would this be "relaying"?) for a fee? This might work, since it wouldn't be a lot of people - less than 100, I'm sure, and I'm willing to pay something for this service.

Thanks.

G-5 Quad Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Jan 30, 2007 10:41 PM in response to Charlie J

> Is there a service where I could direct the streaming video from my OS-10 Server that would then propagate it

Apple provide a (partial) list of streaming vendors that will do this. Other than Akamai (which I work with), I don't know which will do one-off events vs. preferring long-term contracts, but I'm sure a few phone calls would answer that.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/services/list.html

Jan 31, 2007 4:36 PM in response to Camelot

Hi Guys!
We use StreamGuys.com to handle our streaming video (for a fee of course). I use a G4 Xserve (the original one) to run QTBroadcaster on and feed in AV through a Canobus 110. Then, using a T1 I pipe out two encoded streams at once. One WMP and one QT. The QT stream (@256kbps) goes to StreamGuys where they have a Darwin server set up and tons of bandwidth. How many people can watch depends on how much $ you have and how big your file is (encoding rate). My 256Kbps is actually VBR so the rate varies... sometime dropping to under 100 kbps! We do 320x240 at 15 fps which in full screen mode looks "almost" like VHS on an older tv to me. I think Streamguys charge maybe $8 a stream/per month for that. Live streaming is hard for the servers. An expensive you'll find too. On demand streaming is almost free with hosts like DreamHost. But, they can't support live. Really question if your project needs to be live. If not, you'll save loads of $!

QTSS on T1 line-how many viewers for live streaming video?

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