Hi All, I'm planning to get a stream running in the next month or two, and will be using ices and icecast. Legality: Further to the last couple of posts regarding legality issue. I notice that the PRC do their licence cost on a percentage of your revenue, seeing as I plan to host no adverts or indeed any commercial aspect I hope to get a licence without actually paying anything. (I've sent them an inoccous email so we'll see what they say) Relaying: Unless you get a business connection in the UK standard upload is generally 256Kbps regardless of your download rate (hence the Asynchronous bit in ADSL). I plan to use my brother's and parents internet connections at their respective houses as relays for the stream to enable more bandwidth for my listeners to enjoy a smoother stream. A question regarding this, can you use a single address (i.e as a link on a webpage) to balance the load between the various realys, or would you have to have separate addresses (similar to http/ftp mirrors)? I wonder if the former could be achieved with a "round-robin" set-up in the DNS server, whereby a single name resolves to different ip addresses sequentially, it would look something like this on the DNS server for example.com: mystation 0 IN A 192.168.0.1 mystation 0 IN A 192.168.20.1 mystation 0 IN A 62.78.23.7 Above ^ first request made to mystation.example.com would resolve to 192.168.0.1, second to 192.168.20.1, third to 62.78.23.7, forth to 192.168.0.1 - In my mind I think this would work, has anyone tried it, has anyone got a simpler solution perhaps? Thanks, Bizza
If you are using BIND, your supposition is correct about load balancing.>From the BIND manual:3.2. Load Balancing A primitive form of load balancing can be achieved in the DNS by using multiple A records for one name. For example, if you have three WWW servers with network addresses of 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.3, a set of records such as the following means that clients will connect to each machine one third of the time: Name TTL CLASS TYPE Resource Record (RR) Data www 600 IN A 10.0.0.1 600 IN A 10.0.0.2 600 IN A 10.0.0.3 When a resolver queries for these records, BIND will rotate them and respond to the query with the records in a different order. In the example above, clients will randomly receive records in the order 1, 2, 3; 2, 3, 1; and 3, 1, 2. Most clients will use the first record returned and discard the rest. On Fri, 6 May 2005, Michael Hobbs wrote:> Hi All, > > I'm planning to get a stream running in the next month or two, and > will be using ices and icecast.<< >>> Relaying: > Unless you get a business connection in the UK standard upload is > generally 256Kbps regardless of your download rate (hence the > Asynchronous bit in ADSL). I plan to use my brother's and parents > internet connections at their respective houses as relays for the > stream to enable more bandwidth for my listeners to enjoy a smoother > stream. A question regarding this, can you use a single address (i.e > as a link on a webpage) to balance the load between the various > realys, or would you have to have separate addresses (similar to > http/ftp mirrors)? > I wonder if the former could be achieved with a "round-robin" set-up > in the DNS server, whereby a single name resolves to different ip > addresses sequentially, it would look something like this on the DNS > server for example.com: > > mystation 0 IN A 192.168.0.1 > mystation 0 IN A 192.168.20.1 > mystation 0 IN A 62.78.23.7 > > Above ^ first request made to mystation.example.com would resolve to > 192.168.0.1, second to 192.168.20.1, third to 62.78.23.7, forth to > 192.168.0.1 - In my mind I think this would work, has anyone tried it, > has anyone got a simpler solution perhaps? > > Thanks, > Bizza > _______________________________________________ > Icecast mailing list > Icecast@xiph.org > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast >Robert Muchnick Xenterra.net 720-276-7917
Michael Hobbs wrote:> Legality: > Further to the last couple of posts regarding legality issue. I notice > that the PRC do their licence cost on a percentage of your revenue, > seeing as I plan to host no adverts or indeed any commercial aspect I > hope to get a licence without actually paying anything. (I've sent > them an inoccous email so we'll see what they say)Do you mean PRS? I suspect there is a minimum fee - it'd be unlikely to get anything for free from these people.> Relaying: > Unless you get a business connection in the UK standard upload is > generally 256Kbps regardless of your download rate (hence the(although better rates are on the way... http://www.ukonline.net/8000/ )> Asynchronous bit in ADSL). I plan to use my brother's and parents > internet connections at their respective houses as relays for the > stream to enable more bandwidth for my listeners to enjoy a smoother > stream. A question regarding this, can you use a single address (i.e > as a link on a webpage) to balance the load between the various > realys, or would you have to have separate addresses (similar to > http/ftp mirrors)?A quick and easy way of doing this is to add several entries to a playlist file. When one server is full, the player will just try the next one. e.g. for Winamp: http://www.radiofg.com/live/shoutcastFG.pls - although the mime type in this example is wrong :( You could also use a script to generate a single entry playlist, with some kind of round robin algorithm. You could even have the script query the servers to find out which one is least full. Leo
On 07/05/05, Leo Currie <leo.currie@strath.ac.uk> wrote:> Michael Hobbs wrote: > > > Legality: > > Further to the last couple of posts regarding legality issue. I notice > > that the PRC do their licence cost on a percentage of your revenue, > > seeing as I plan to host no adverts or indeed any commercial aspect I > > hope to get a licence without actually paying anything. (I've sent > > them an inoccous email so we'll see what they say) > > Do you mean PRS? I suspect there is a minimum fee - it'd be unlikely to > get anything for free from these people.Michael - I'd be grateful if you'd report back if you hear anything from them...> > Relaying: > > Unless you get a business connection in the UK standard upload is > > generally 256Kbps regardless of your download rate (hence the > > (although better rates are on the way... http://www.ukonline.net/8000/ )That company blocks outgoing port 80 (and others), because they don't want you running a web server. Presumably they won't be too keen on people running streaming servers either... Dan
Michael Hobbs wrote:> Hi All, ><snip>> A question regarding this, can you use a single address (i.e > as a link on a webpage) to balance the load between the various > realys, or would you have to have separate addresses (similar to > http/ftp mirrors)? > I wonder if the former could be achieved with a "round-robin" set-up > in the DNS server, whereby a single name resolves to different ip > addresses sequentially, it would look something like this on the DNS > server for example.com: > > mystation 0 IN A 192.168.0.1 > mystation 0 IN A 192.168.20.1 > mystation 0 IN A 62.78.23.7i guess you this is just an example... you are aware that the first 2 addresses are private and will not be reachable from the internet?> Above ^ first request made to mystation.example.com would resolve to > 192.168.0.1, second to 192.168.20.1, third to 62.78.23.7, forth to > 192.168.0.1 - In my mind I think this would work, has anyone tried it, > has anyone got a simpler solution perhaps?this is called round-robin dns, and it's a common if crude way of load balancing. you might want to try karl's icecast branch. it supports a master-slave setup where the master when full will tell a client to go a free slave via a http redirect. regards, j?rn