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AOL Developing Cheap Switch for Audio Streaming
legaleagll writes: "According to a Fortune magazine article and a follow-up article on ZDNet, AOL is developing a cheap switch that can handle streaming audio for 10,000 users, versus current technology of 100 - 1,000 users per box depending on expense of system. The code name for the product is Ultravox and was apparantly spurred into existence because RealNetworks is now offering internet service for cheaper than AOL. I'm a little skeptical because I'm not sure how the use of an intelligent router would eliminate the need for the expensive systems to stream the audio. Wouldn't moving the software for streaming onto the router make for a more expensive router and still require the expense a box outside of the router anyway?"
I have some new movies can they stream them for me? Check out Episode 14.
Now that AOL is one of the few companies big enough to pay the royalty costs involved with web streaming, they've got technology to make it easier on themselves.
Err, wait, AOL isn't doing so well these days, maybe they don't have those types of resources.
Well, once MS buys AOL, they'll be able to use it!
I think Midge Ure might have something to say about that!
Yeah but given the fact that serving that many users is now *that much* more expensive, this seems irrelevant? Not to mention how much dedicated bandwidth *still* costs nowadays (no, not cable, but the stuff you use to host 10,000 users....)
-kwishot
The problems with streaming don't seem to me to be the capacity of the streaming boxes, but the bandwidth and legal problems. Faster hardware is nice, but the streaming costs are still going to be too high.
i fed it some beer.
I won. Sorry, dude.
Peace out!
I wonder if they'll prepend every song coming through with "You've Got Music".
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Wow, I can't believe someone trolled with a Kirsty MacColl song. Talk about an obscure reference.
you only stream one band!
So now everyone can pay the RIAA thanks to the CARP. Thanks AOL.
AOL: 50 million people can't all be stupid...Can they?
Phase 1: AOL develops the Super Audio Switcher 2000 - let your whole business listen to the music you would normally pipe through the company speakers at once! Want cool hold music? Just plug the SAS2000 into your PBX!
Phase 2: Hello, we're lawyers from AOL. Seems that your business has been streaming Time Warner music without our official permission. You now owe use $1,000,000,000 dollars - or your entire company, whichever is greater.
(Please note: the above is "sarcasm", and is not meant to reflect a real world situation. Please turn "cluelessesness" switch to "off" when reading this post. That you.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It seems to me that moving the streaming onto the switch refers to multicast...At that point the bandwidth issues for supporting 10,000 users become much more manageable. Now, just have to find those 10,000 users on multicast enabled networks...
"I'm not sure how the use of an intelligent router would eliminate the need for the expensive systems to stream the audio. Wouldn't moving the software for streaming onto the router make for a more expensive router and still require the expense a box outside of the router anyway?"
I'm assuming that for these big operations that have multiple sites for streaming, it works something like this: You have a source for the stream, which no end-users ever touch. The job for this machine is to feed the routers, which can be in various areas of the world or whatever. That way each router has a dedicated "in" stream so that it can feed the masses. In a smaller operation where multiple sites aren't needed, this piece of hardware isn't needed either, so this thing actually does save money for an establishment that can take advantage of it's potential.
"I'm not sure how the use of an intelligent router would eliminate the need for the expensive systems to stream the audio."
Currently 1000 users == 1000 streams. An intelligent switch looks at the content, says broadcast one stream to the 1000 users. Sounds simple. Not, though. Check articles on "Layer 4" switches.
I'm not sure how the use of an intelligent router would eliminate the need for the expensive systems to stream the audio. Wouldn't moving the software for streaming onto the router make for a more expensive router and still require the expense a box outside of the router anyway?
My guess? This is a smart cacheing system.
The ZDnet article makes much reference to bandwidth congestion as a major stumbling block to streaming media. As a user will always get the same data back when requesting a media stream, you could set up smart router/proxies to cache, oh, the first few blocks of all media clips and the entire contents of the last N requested clips (up to a space limit). Assuming many users are listening to the same clip in the same general timeframe, you only have to stream the clip to the cacheing router once (instead of many times), saving bandwidth and load on your source box. Non-media traffic is routed as usual.
Or this could be something completely different. But a smart router/transparent proxy type of deal seems to be the most beneficial thing to develop.
Why develop propietary switches and fileformats when all that is required is a full implementation of multicast (which is just a part of IP)?
Everytime I hear about streaming media again, I think back to the mbone. Why give a stream to every single user when you can intelligently stream media using the very thing that makes the internet what it is, it's ability to route packets to their destination? Why should I have to send out 1000 copies of the *same damn thing* over my wire when I could just send one copy and let the routers send copies to subnets that are going to use it?
Whatever happened to the mbone!?!?!?!?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photos/gerijeweljun23 _20.jpg
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
Gee, I hope the sound is of the same pristine quality I've come to expect from .ra files. It'll have to be, if they want to compete, right?
Here's hoping for streaming audio that sounds like it was encoded in my basement, beneath an overturned copper bathtub, during a torrential downpour.
--saint
There are about 50 companies that already make this product. For a little service called content delivery networking.
cisco, cacheflow, network appliance, volera, and the list goes on and on
"Time Warner sues AOL over streaming copyrighted media content to its subscribers."
competition is spurring innovation, and creating something that will be a benifit to the end us^H^H^H er.... wait a minute... this won't benifit those who streaming, just who server up the stream... d'oh!
"Wouldn't moving the software for streaming onto the router make for a more expensive router and still require the expense a box outside of the router anyway?"
dmarien
While niether article has anything technical I have worked in this industry for awhile now. I'm going to assume some things first off this is primarly for live streams only or simulated live as a router has no place mucking with vod streams it dosent have the memory to help besides some QOS things. OK now assuming it's live the best way to get the data out is multicast it but unfortunatly the Tier 1 ISP's cant figure out how to bill for Mcast and it dosent reach far enough like past an ISP and nearly never to anything like dialup or broadband it's a college toy. Now insert a router that can take multicast live streams and do a unicast conversion (it's not much harder than nat and just about everything that can load Cisco IOS can run NAT) Now that changes the math on the head end the servers only need to support the stream 1 time and the additional connections for authentication (non scalable multicast as real would term it) this would be a wonderfull thing to the source people and the end user (especialy if the cable head ends can convert back to multicast) and AOL has the size to get the teir 1's to play ball AOL is a huge installed base.
But like I said this is all conjecture on my part. It may just be them whalking the arrowpoint boxes again they are routers of sorts (load ballancers realy) that can accept drive space.
No sir I dont like it.
The tech breakthroughs were made several years ago. You can refer to them conveneiently as the 802 standards of the IEEE. These loveable consumer friendly open standards include 10GbE for fiber and 802.11 for wireless. If users were simply given non-oversold bandwidth is healthy quantities streaming would not require any further breakthroughs. It's the oversold capacity business model that causes the problems. The answers are simple and no breakthrough is necesary except pricing breakthroughs in line with ethernet technology.
The Baby Bells and their friends at the cable monopolies say they can't just run their backbone fiber on ethernet and just leave it that way till it gets to the users. You see --eh hem-- there's all these complicated reasons that have to do with --cough, eh hem-- profitable business models that will be good for consumers in the long run once profits have been brought back on track. But don't you users worry, they're only thinking of how to provide you with the services you want at the prices that are fair. We can all trust corporate America because it's a well known fact that corporate America is the cornerstone of integrity and honesty and excellent value.
AOL's genius new technique is probably a much better idea than simple giving users what they ask for which is plain old internet over ethernet bandwidth. After all, AOL has a great history of giving users a much better product than the one they are looking for.
It's Kirsty, you anonymous f-tard. "Kirsty" by her parents...
I daresay that I am in strong favour of any technology that can increase the audiences of struggling musicians. People forget that the current wave of civilisation began in the Rennaisance, and was due largely to the activities of a few visionary artists, and musicians in particular.
The bulk of our energies should go into supporting culture and the Arts. Otherwise, we end up no better off than our ancestors in the Dark Ages. And that, fellow Slashdot readers, would be a tragedy indeed.
"I'm a rocket man / Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." - Sir Elton John
or it will become another m$ 'innovation' desperately needing integration into windows, engendering, of course, incompatibility with existing formats ( which natuarally will be everyone else's fault, including DOJ's who doesn't allow them to steal^H^H^H^H^Hinnovate).
For live events, IP multicasting seems to be the way to go, but where is it?! I was using the MBONE back in '94. ISP's have never configured their systems for IP multicasting. It seems to me that IP multicasting would save a ton of bandwidth!
BTW, my understanding is that Akamai internally uses IP multicasting to send data out to all it's caching boxes. Now why couldn't they get ISP's to multicast enable their networks? It would save everyone some bandwidth.
This is just another futile attempt from AOL to grab on to the and I quote "millions and millions" of people who got wise to their crap.
Pax Vobiscum
What you could have is an intelligent server/router system wherein the router handles accepting new connections then after the codebooks have been sent adds the connection to a quasi-multicast group. In this way, the server would only have to handle new connections and continuing to feed the router with the source stream.
. .
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
AOL already has the broadcasting infrastructure and the reciever infrastructure. Shoutcast uses streaming mp3s which do stream very well considering its not the best compression out there anymore. Winamp is probably still one of the best mp3 players out there.
The problem of course, if they want to kill real audio, is that AOL does NOT have the infrastructure to do video. Others might say the problem is that all this is bottled up in the mess which is currently time-warner. The company which bought up all the tools to destroy microsoft then failed to develop them.
But all this is a moot point because a sizable percentage of people haven't used any real audio product or service in ages because microsoft's media player is adaquate, free, and doesn't require installtion (since it's bundled with the os) or navigating past the "pay for something you already have!" screens to get to the "free" player.
Real audio is a dying format. All AOL has to do is either buy the company (doubtful given the current economic climate at time warner) or simply throw their support to quicktime or windows media. Eventually real audio will go the way of so many other dot.coms that tried to play in microsoft's sandbox.
How much does a Commodore 64 cost on Ebay these days?
Multicast doesn't fix the problem of a hundred different sources only hundreds watching the same thing at the same time.
I, for one, would think that the majority of the programming would be on-demand.
If the traffic is on demand then, MBone or not, the traffic cost is the same.
I can see why AOL would want to do this, seeing as they seem they provide the bandwidth (seemingly for free) to some big streamers like digitallyimported.com who have thousands of unicast streams at 128Kbit. Never quite seen whats in for them myself, but kudos to them for doing it anyway.
Multicast won't fix the problem of many streams to many viewers only one stream to many viewers at the same time.
I think that the majority of the programming would be on-demand.
If the traffic is on demand then, MBone or not, the traffic cost is the same.
Can you imagine? What next? Cars? "You've got gas!"
Do we honestly need ANOTHER revenue (pardon the pun) stream for AOL/Time Warner? IF this is going to keep happening, why don't we just cut to the chase and impose an AOL/Time Warner tax on everything we do? Then they can just sit down and shut up...
In the mean time, I really think someone ought to take AOL's attempt at cornering the VOIP sector and squash it like a bug by producing one Killer Router/Switch. Sounds like a job for Cisco.. (not to be confused with Sisquo)
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
ah... Vienna
(Ultravox!)
(The new wave band).
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
..will they be dancing with tears in their eyes?
Unfortunately.
Feel sorry for the network guys...having to listen to "You've got sound!" all day from one or more of these routers would probably get rather annoying...
--mh
AOL users are morons anyway and would be WAAAYY too stupid to know how to use this technology.
Am I right on this? HrmmmmMM?
Today America Online corperation announced a new process for streaming full motion video and full 2-channel stero sound to 10,000 simultaneous viewers. The technology was discovered in the back room of an Time Warner office during the merger last year.
Its called cable fucking T.V. what the hell is this crap?
In Eden?
Last I checked the two biggest problems with massive streaming audio were 1) the high cost of a real audio license, and 2) the high cost of bandwidth. The latter might not be a problem for AOL . But the former is.
AOL could be writing this switch to use MPEG-4 which would solve both problems to some degree. Consider also how much money AOL has to put into this project. The ROI could be huge.
Sounds like MBone/IP Multicast to me. I remember attending talks from Sprint, Cisco and the federal government in uses for the technology.
I am not a streaming media expert but I do know routers and gateways.
This could speed up streaming media because the bigest limitation on SM is handling very large IP stacks of high-bandwidth connections. Dedicated hardware which does not have the overhead of OS and general-purpose software can handle a lot more connections. In addition, it would probably run cooler and fit into a 1U rackspace.
Those features should make it desireable to any ISP who provides streaming media.
Throw in 4GB of ram and each 1U server could probably handle most if not all of the average ISP's SM content cached.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
What they need is a layer 6+ content-aware caching media switch (which differs from "content routers"/"content switches", which were hot 18 months ago).
And, to answer the poster: specialized hardware is far superior to gen-purpose software, as you can make far more performance-enhancing assumptions from the kernel up. Only question is whether you want to go down to the level of ASICs, or play at the firmware level.
As at least one vendor already makes them, so AOL seems to be off on a fun science project.
Apple claims that their QuickTime Streaming Server can send 4000 silultaneous streams. That's a lot more than 100 to 1000.
It's also available as an open-souce project, depending on your exact definition of open-source (not Free for all uses, apparantly).
Wouldn't moving the software for streaming onto the router make for a more expensive router and still require the expense a box outside of the router anyway?"
Yep, but if the box is streaming the same exact stream to lots of users, it could save a whole lot of expensive bandwidth by transmitting one copy of the stream over the long-haul backbone lines, where presumably a switch nearer to a cluster of users could transmit individual copies to the users over the "last mile".
I don't know if that's what they're really doing, but it'd be the smart thing to do. Bandwidth on the internet backbone is a lot more expensive than servers and switches.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
guess this development couldn't have come at a better time huh aol? Now that streaming radio is becoming reduced to clearchannel style crap packed full of advertisement and delivered to you by Microsoft, Disney, and yes now TW/AOL, it would seem appropriate for them to devolop propritary technology that prepares them for this vast new market they've conqured by slipping greenbacks into the RIAA's panty straps.
btw: they're out to make sure you're not exposed to new music at work too: http://www.msnbc.com/news/773100.asp?0si=-
listen to clearchannel.... by cd's for $15 a piece from the top 40 rack at Sam Goody... now dance... dance... dance...
ôó
It seems to me that this should be placed under that category with the cartoon MP foot... what's the term for that one again?
To me, this is funny... not in any sort of way useful.
return 0;
}
See subj for translation from journalistic into english...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Why can't we just post replies to everything with a good ol' ASCII version of "goatse.cx"
There are situations where increasing the bandwidth in a network can actually decrease performance. say you have some routers working hard to keep up with 10Mbit links.. you say.. "sure wish my net was faster" so you upgrade to 100Mbit. Now the routers are freakin out and dropping everything left and right and throughput is actually going down instead of up.. and now your fired too.
Better hardware and better protocols (ATM comes to mind) can go a LONG way in stopping jitter (variance in delay) and decreasing delay. I think this is AOL's thinking with this new switch.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Wouldn't simply using IP Multicast save you a lot more money on equipment and bandwidth?
With multicast, the distribution process is spread out across routers, so it's much less likely that the same bits will cross the same wire twice. If multicast routers were ubiquitous, the same bits would never cross the same wire twice.
If you think about it, this is a fantastic deal - one of the big problems with broadband right now is that the broadband provider has a nice fat pipe to each subscriber, and a similarly fat pipe to the whole rest of the world. So there's a lot of contention on the pipe to the outside world, whereas the pipe to your house is mostly idle. With multicast, a 192kbps feed down the pipe to the outside world can put 192kbps on a significant percentage of the customer pipes. So the ISP can feed much more data to the subscriber for much lower cost.
Interestingly, this also works to the webcaster's advantage - if you want to set up a webcast service on your home machine, it's no skin off the ISP's nose, because you're not pushing 192kbps *per listener* out their pipe to the world - you're pushing a total of 192kbps, which is much less expensive for them. This reduces their incentive/ability to provide lopsided connectivity, where you can receive a lot but send only a little.
My only worry is that AOL might be deploying something proprietary and non-interoperable, and then the ISPs will wind up paying for a system that we can't use this way, even though it would have cost the same as a system we could use this way.
For true live or "like live" (c'mon you _know_ what I mean), surely the best way to deal with this stuff is to send one packet that will eventually reach every node that has declared interest, ie true multicasting?
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Liberty? What is that? The freedom to kill yourself slowly? I assure you I want to take that away from everyone. More precisely, I want people to relinqish it. Forget about pledging alegiance to the nation. I want the nation, indeed the world to pledge alegiance to me and my God...except pledges are silly pieces of fluff...still it'd be fun to see... Back to the present, seeing those people standing on the steps, saying things they don't really mean, now that's funny. How can I say that they don't really mean what they say? Because they accept the concept that the word "God" can refer to anyone basically.
There is someone that exists that is God. Perhaps he hasn't been listening to me. (A public declaration to him, so that there be no misunderstanding) You are my God. If Christ isn't a part or some form of you, then that is a mistake that I'll happily correct.(ends)
Most Christians won't do that. They are fools...but perhaps "fool" is too harsh?
We still need some techical information to determine if it's a good device.
:)
When talking about streaming audio/video, you can do 2 things.
1) If it's a recorded stream(not live), you can cache the stream it to the users, like a HTTP proxy
2) If it's a live stream you don't cache it. You split the live stream, which means the the box recieves one stream(or two to prevent blackout/ensure quality) and then split it to as many as the box can handle.
There are a few of these types boxes available today, some are kinda reverse engineering the protocols. Those that do it properly, reports back the number of streams that the serve to the origin server(fx. Real). The broadcasting server then sees 2000(or whatever)clients attached but only the bandwith of one(pr. streaming speed). This means that copyright and licence can still be monitored by the broadcaster.
There are many uses for this. One is companies that allow people to listen to net radios etc, watch streams to save outgoing bandwith on their internet connection. Works well here, only problem is with broadcasters that don't allow proxies to split/cache their stream because of some of these boxes, as I mentioned, have rev.eng. it so they don't care about reporting back the streams they are serving and the broadcaster needs to know how many because of copyright issues.
Another usage is that when you got your 100's of servers running. It requires much less maintainance to have these boxes running than adding another server to serve streams.
Big worldwide companies that does broadcasts internally(education, pep talks) has a box on each location to save traffic on their WAN.
Then there is the ISP's that can have these boxes on their POPs. In the age of xDSL, they can put a box on every location where they have their xDSL housed. This helps, again, on the bandwidth on their backbone network. The question here of course is if there is money enough to be saved/earned from this. Those that would really benefit from this would be the broadcasters. Will the ISPs install these boxes so the broadcasters(customers) can save money? Maybe they would need to sign a contract before their steams would be cached/split. And then there's always Akamai. We have seen with the reality shows on TV, many users running streams from the show. Even though these shows have peaked, I'd say that there's still a lot of potential in streaming services.
Ok I could go on for hours about this.
What I see as the biggest challenge is to have all the broadcasters to allow proxies to cache or split their streams. All to often they just deny it because they are concerned about loosing control about the number of viewers, specially on pay per view services. I think we don't really need another cheap box, we need to ensure that these boxes will be used and in order to do this, the trust between the ones making the boxes, those who install them and the broadcasters, are established. Otherwise the boxes will have only be used by the broadcasters themself and if they make deals with ISP's to split/cache their streams, which is a shame. Imagine a internet where every POP has a streaming box installed. The bandwidth recieved by the users in the home could be huge with only little load on the backbone / internet.
my sig
I know this is off topic, and nitpicking, but this has bugged me for awhile and now is my chance(no offence meant to the story poster).Whenever I see a post about a certain thing and it's a very detailed description of it and it is called by a 'codename' isn't that...well, stupid? If it is referred to by a codename then we wouldn't know what it was, that's the reason for the codename to hide it or to confuse a competitor. Isn't it just a name and not a codename?
Some of you guys might want to look at VirginRadio's website (www.VirginRadio.com), they have a broadband stream (you've got to put in a password to access it, free reg though). The twist is, it's a peer to peer stream, they use a plugin by AllCast.
Apparently, what this plugin does is contact the server and obtain a list of listeners, it then find a listener with atleast a 100kbs upload capacity and connects to them, receiving their stream from them. You'd think there'd be lots of problems.. e.g, it'd be slow, you'd get your bandwidth sucked away, you'd get cut off randomly. Well.. no. I've been listenening for about three days now, i've been cut off only twice in that time and i've had somebody else connected to me most of that time as well and I didn't even notice it till I looked at my upload stats later in the day.
I'll put my money on this being the way to get around the problem, why does the server need to be the one to be dishing out all the bandwith? Why doesn't the server just serve the streams to other users, who in turn serve it to other users. Fairs fair.
SysWear - Geek T-shirts (UK/Europe)
If there was a way for the AOL system to act as a peer-to-peer system, then once a user (A) has begun caching the stream, another user (B) could start streaming the cache from user (A). That way, the router itself would not have to do too many simultaneously, and the great majority of AOL users would actually be streaming from someone else's cache.
I know, lots of potential pitfalls.
But since AOL already installs its software on user's computers, and a lot now are starting to be on cable modems, this could work.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I reallyhope that this tech or something even better becomes avaialble. I've been waiting for years to be able to afford enough bandwith to start net broadcasting. I've done static files as tests, they are OK, but live is where my heart is at, ie, talk radio on the net. Everything I have looked at is so ridiculoulsy expensive that it can't be beyond a small listener hobby or you have to have very deep pockets. I had had this idea of multiple routers as more a P2P deal where you have the appropriate program that is both server and client simultaneously, you subscribe to a channel feed someplace, accept the stream and re broadcast to two more people, and they in turn, and etc, an intelligent almost instant growing system/stream, but MAN would I be over my head in trying to build something like that.
Any streaming network engineers here understand what I'm trying to say? Is this feasible, is it being done, is this a semi new idea-what? if this is a cool idea, and anyone wants to help with this idea, maybe we can connect and kick it around. I NEVER thought the idea of one big fat pipe trying to be the mother ship for a zillion streams was a good idea, I much prefer the idea of shared and boosted streams, sorta like gnutella but "live broadcast".
check out: http://www.surgientnetworks.com
Similar concept, but already exists, and does the same thing with video.
when you consider they can handle all of the bandwidth used by all the realnetwork streaming servers on one switch, yeah, its a lot cheaper.
You better check again. There is a wonderful world of switches out there now. Every kind of switch from layer 2 through layer 7. There are many other manufacturers offering similar products too.
The difference between these "switches" and the layer 3 routers that you are use to is the hardware architecture. While older routers consisted of routing code on a CPU passing packets through the CPU and out the appropriate interface, these layer 3-7 switches use ASICs(Application Specific Integrated Circuits) to process the packets rather than the CPU. This translates into a MUCH higher throughput than the CPU based router could ever handle.
If you get in medium to large networks you will see these switches everywhere. Switches with 128 or more gigabit ethernet ports all switching at line speed. Your Alcatel DSL router or Cisco 2600 doesn't even know what line speed is.
Indeed, there are layer 7 switches. Some of the Nortel/Alteon switches can even switch based on URLs. Makes for a much faster hosting site.
those of us that have worked for DSL/Cable providers and have had the tech support calls about AOL's Software/client (bloated mess of code) screwing up the TCP/IP and network settings, you would also know how intrusive and controling it is on a typical PC.
Earlier someone said something about running NAT or a form of NAT on the new SM "router".
If you think about the fact that to use AOL's service you MUST have their client. They could very easliy have 1 or a few of the SM routers at each POP as needed. Set up one or more servers to deliver SM content only to the SM routers and run NAT to each (AOL Connected computer) behind it, thus reducing the effective WAN traffic from 5000 streams to one or two for each POP.
How will the router integrate with the desktop PC?
Think about a VPN with out the encryption, where the router is the remote network and the AOL client (PC) is the host. With out the need for encryption the processor overhead is limited.
Comming soon to a DELL near you!
"AOL 8.1 totally redesigned for streaming media."
AOL acomplishes this-
1) New users brought in by the consept that they too can get [decent] streaming media off their 56K.
2) Old users remain hooked- it actually works, and a ID10T can opperate it.
3) Finally while we would think bandwidth is not that much of a issue, it would still cut in to their margins, and thus the say 5+ million spent on the project development would prolly get made up in the reduced infastructure demands, reduced bandwidth utlized (thus no additional hardware for some time, outside of this project of course) and less human/shell script overhead as far as maintaining a decent QOS.
My $0.04
--thanks! it exists! that is exactly what I thought I was describing as being the 'way to do it". It's just an obvious cool way. Everyone share the bandwith they got to spare!
Now the bummer part, no broadband here! Broadband is standing on the front porch and YELLING REALLY LOUD and that's about it, but I will go look at those website references you listed. cool beans.
--OK, I just looked. this is WAY cool, I didn't know it existed. Only bummer is it's "darkside" only. You share the stream, one or more, this will WORK, this is the answer to the expensive net streaming chokepoints.
PUH LEEZ some of ya'all linux coders check this out, see if it's portable easy! Purty pleez!
AOL's so easy to use, no wonder it's #1!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
When I was typing the parent comment I was drawing a total blank on the name of Midge Ure's band. It hit me on Sunday evening while I was repairing the garage door.
--
E_NOSIG