Is it wise to host your own radio station?

[Gadfly]

I am on a free server which is un-reliable and I cannot afford to pay. I am also against he idea of auto DJ because I won't be able to process the sound.

 

My router is fire-walled and I use Comodo firewall on my PC.

 

I have un-limited broadband at 50 megs.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Gadfly.

[PapaBearPW]

I suppose that would depend on how many listeners you expect and how stable your ISP connection is. Since most people pull a dynamic IP from their ISP about once a day, I would recommend you use a dynamic DNS so you don't have to update your site with your new IP all the time. Most routers these days allow you to put dynamic DNS server settings in them and they then update the service automaticlly whenever they get a new IP. After that, just port forwarding (i.e. port 8000) to your PC and I think that could work just fine.

 

edit: Oh, and you may need to open the port in your PC firewall too of course.

[djgary72]

It all depends on what you Upload speed is http://speedtest.net will tell you what your upload speed is, also a good way of finding out how many listeners you could host http://www.radiotoolbox.com/online_tools/bandwidth.php that should give you some hope.

[Gadfly]

It all depends on what you Upload speed is http://speedtest.net will tell you what your upload speed is, also a good way of finding out how many listeners you could host http://www.radiotoolbox.com/online_tools/bandwidth.php that should give you some hope.

 

I note my upload is only about 3 Mbps. I'm getting 0 listeners for that on the stream calculator.

 

Thanks to you both anyway.

[shoutcaststreaming]

With 3 mbps you can get about 22 listeners at 128k 24/7.

[Gadfly]

With 3 mbps you can get about 22 listeners at 128k 24/7.

 

Thank you for that information.

 

I'd stream at 64 K or 48K AAC so that would mean 40 or so listeners.

[Urban Hitz Radio]

Get yourself a nice low cost dedi with 5-10TB of BW. And use a nice low cost streaming server with 100-200 slots for an uninterrupted stream. It's the way to go. That way you can stream at a full 128kbps AND 64kbps without any worries (depending on the broadcasting software you're using).

 

I forgot you said you can't pay...well there goes that idea. LOL

Can you afford $5.00 a month? If so, then you can get yourself a reliabale low cost streaming server to use. There's going to have to be some kind of give and take here.

 

Now if you are going to do this from home, I do not recommend using your ISP bandwidth. Let's say it goes down at 3AM for maintenance, or there is an outage (more common with home connections). Especially on a Cable ISP. You're def gonna need a streaming server. Let's say you max out your 40 slots. What happens when you start doing lots of stuff on your system: i.e., uploading, heavy isp usage... then you're gonna have a stream that's buffering, and constantly skipping, with long gaps in the playback. Trust me, I listen to a lot of amateur stations that do this, and the output is horrible.

They may think it sounds good on their end (because they are playing the music), but as the listener, that's not good!

[Gadfly]

@UHR - my friend uses Reliastream and he seems happy enough.

[Urban Hitz Radio]

sounds good. I've used them before. Reliable.