IceCast2, how many clients on a VPS?

[thecoalman]

Not sure what I'm getting myself into here but what kind of resources do you need for say 100 clients connected at once to Icecast? Is this beyond what you should be doing with a VPS?

I have setup Ventrilo on my VPS for an online discussion with just a few people. I'm streaming that discussion from my own personal machine to the icecast server on my VPS for broadcast. So far it workds but I've only had a few people connect to icecast stream for testing purposes and I don't know what my limits here. Anyone familiar with it or have icecast running and how many concurrent clients are you serving?

I may be wrong but I believe it's the bandwidth that will take the most abuse?

[thisisit3]

I can't say for sure, but i do know that the VPS's offered by Jag are the CPU equivalent of a Pentium 2 or maybe a 386

If you require lots of cpu power then a VPS will probably won't do. The SDX hosting has loads of power but you loose your "root" customization.

[thecoalman]

If you require lots of cpu power then a VPS will probably won't do. The SDX hosting has loads of power but you loose your "root" customization.

Unless I'm mistaken CPU is going to be a non issue because I'll be doing all the encoding on my end. I really only need the server for the bandwidth.

The way I have it setup is I'm using ventrilo as the communication software. This itself uses very little CPU, it's just acting as a hub for the streams. The encoding is done client side. I was monitoring it with top during a test and not even a blip.

The icecast server is the same deal because I'm encoding the conversation on the fly on my personal machine and streaming it to icecast on my VPS which the clients can connect to. I don't see why that would consume CPU because again it's just using bandwidth....

I'll probably be using MP3 for compatibility purposes at about 60kbps or maybe less if i can get away with it sounding good at a lower bitrate so each client is going to need about 6KB/s. So the question is how many can expect to connect without pissing the neighbors off and screwing up the server?

At this point it's only going to be used maybe once or twice a month for about 15 to 30 minutes per show but I expect at least a lot of interest for the original broadcast.

[JPC-Nick]

Unless I'm mistaken CPU is going to be a non issue because I'll be doing all the encoding on my end. I really only need the server for the bandwidth.

The way I have it setup is I'm using ventrilo as the communication software. This itself uses very little CPU, it's just acting as a hub for the streams. The encoding is done client side. I was monitoring it with top during a test and not even a blip.

The icecast server is the same deal because I'm encoding the conversation on the fly on my personal machine and streaming it to icecast on my VPS which the clients can connect to. I don't see why that would consume CPU because again it's just using bandwidth....

I'll probably be using MP3 for compatibility purposes at about 60kbps or maybe less if i can get away with it sounding good at a lower bitrate so each client is going to need about 6KB/s. So the question is how many can expect to connect without pissing the neighbors off and screwing up the server?

At this point it's only going to be used maybe once or twice a month for about 15 to 30 minutes per show but I expect at least a lot of interest for the original broadcast.

You wont have any problems with those numbers, I did a test stream with 50 active connections on one of our nodes for 3 days nobody noticed it was there, although I was using shoutcast

[thecoalman]

Thanks Nick, do you remember what kind of bitrate you were streaming?

[JPC-Nick]

Thanks Nick, do you remember what kind of bitrate you were streaming?

128kbps or maybe it was 64kbps it was one of those though.

[thecoalman]

although I was using shoutcast

According to the Icecast site, Icecast utilizes significantly less memory compared to Shoutcast however by the graph you'd need a very large audience before you'd see any difference.



http://www.icecast.org/loadtest3.php

That's older test though. The CPU server side is about the same.

[homoludens]

You wont have any problems with those numbers, I did a test stream with 50 active connections on one of our nodes for 3 days nobody noticed it was there, although I was using shoutcast

Do you have any idea how many 64k streams you can comfortably serve from a VPS node (say the VPS-Three) plan?

[thecoalman]

Max I had was about 24 at that speed over a 45 minute show. Additional three connections through ventrilo which I think was around 64kbps too.

Season is over so I won't be getting more than that until the fall.

If bandwidth becomes an issue I'll look to see if I can drop it to 32kbps mono which should provide the same quality in my case as its talk show.

I used to do that with WMV video, drop the framerate to 10 or 15, use about 20kbps mono on the audio and you could still get a decent sized video with decent audio for the 56k audience.


http://www.40lbhead.com/headfiles/al...e_wandt_du.wmv

70kbps....