You can calculate the bandwidth necessary for your Internet radio station with basic math. What is important is to know how much bandwidth you have available and the bitrate you wish to stream your music. For instance, a personal computer is completely capable of hosting an Internet radio broadcast. However, it is extremely unlikely your ISP could give you the bandwidth needed at a reasonable cost.
Bandwidth is the amount of data your Internet connection can transfer from point A to point B in a given time frame, typically measured by the second. That means, in most cases, upstreaming from your home will cause constant buffering. While the big upstream bandwidth of a datacentre can source thousands of listeners without skipping a beat.
Bitrate simply refers to the audio quality of the stream, this is measured in technical terms of ‘kbps – kilobytes per second’ or ‘k’ for short. For example, listening to a station in 128k stereo would sound similar to CD quality. Whereas, 24k would sound more like talking on the phone.
Example bandwidth calculations
Below are a few brief examples of upstream bandwidth. Please note upstreaming and downstreaming are very different things. The opposite, in fact. Internet radio stations upstream to listeners who downstream, or download if you will. In general, datacentres are built for upstreaming, ISPs are built for downloading.
One megabyte per second is equal to one thousand twenty-four kilobytes per second (1 Mbps = 1024 Kbps). So, if you stream at a bitrate of 128 Kbps the following approximation is true.
- -1 Mbps upstream connection = 8 Listeners
- -10 Mbps upstream connection = 80 Listeners
- -100 Mbps upstream connection = 800 Listeners
- -1000 Mbps (1 Gbps) upstream connection = 8000 Listeners
- -10000 Mbps (10 Gbps) upstream connections = 80000 Listeners
If your plan is to have as many listeners as possible, we recommend the services of an Internet radio hosting company such as ourselves, Gecko. For example, our cheap Shoutcast servers have the bandwidth capacity to cater to thousands of listeners simultaneously, even at 320 Kbps.
What’s the difference between bandwidth and data transfer?
As we described above, bandwidth is the calculation of data measured in a single second. Data transfer is the combined total of that data over time.
Let’s say as an example you’re upstreaming at 128 Kbps and you have 100 listeners actively tuned in. The bandwidth math here again is quite basic, 128 Kbps x 100 listeners = 10000 Kbps (approximately). So, in a single second, the amount of data transfer is just that, 10000 Kb or 10 Mb. However, over a month, that adds up seriously fast. Let’s do the math, 10 megabytes x 86400 seconds per day = 864000 megabytes or 843 gigabytes, and that’s only for 24 hours. Multiply 843 Gigs x 30 days and you get 25,000 Gb or 25 Tb (terabytes!) of data transfer per month. Ouch! That hurts! Just remember:
Bitrate + listeners = bandwidth
Bandwidth + time = data transfer
Clearly, you can see why an Internet radio hosting provider is a big advantage for the cost. You and your listeners will connect to the radio server as a hub instead of your computer directly. Some providers, such as ourselves, even go as far as offering unlimited data transfer which is often confused with unlimited bandwidth.
What about unlimited or unmetered bandwidth?
The term “unlimited” is quite controversial in the hosting industry. Basically, because unlimited bandwidth does not exist. What that really means in terms of web hosting and Internet radio broadcasting is unlimited data transfer. For instance, our unlimited Icecast hosting plans come with unlimited data transfer rather than unlimited bandwidth as shown to prevent confusion. The average person may not know the difference, but now, you do.
Unmetered bandwidth is the appropriate term for unlimited bandwidth.
In summary, upstream and downstream are two completely different things as are bandwidth and data transfer. Furthermore, we learned when referring to unlimited bandwidth, the accurate terminology is unmetered bandwidth.
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Its seems to be good and work
We already have a streaming service and a contract with an internet provider. What would we have to do to get your services
Kia ora Norrie, we would love to host your radio station. I will have someone reach out via email. Cheers!