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PeerCast is an open source streaming media multicast tool. PeerCast uses peer to peer technology to minimize the necessary upload bandwidth for the original multicastor. See also Peercasting. Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
Streaming media is media that is consumed (read, heard, viewed) while it is being delivered. ...
It has been suggested that Peer-to-Peer Streaming Systems and Incentive Mechanisms be merged into this article or section. ...
Peercasting is a method of multicasting streams, usually audio and/or video, to the internet via peer-to-peer technology. ...
Peercast is released under the GPL and is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. The peercast source code is available from http://www.peercast.org/code. The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is the most popular free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ...
*Warning: The peercast plugin on Winamp.com is old and broken and may cause many problems.
How Peercast works Peercast can be used to multicast streaming audio (Ogg Vorbis, Mp3, WMA) and/or video (Ogg Theora, Nullsoft Video, or WMV), or any other stream of data, over the internet. Peercast uses a distributed bandwidth technique to lighten the load of the broadcaster's upstream bandwidth where each listener/viewer will relay the stream they download to one or more additional listeners. Users may choose how many relays to allow, and if a listener sets their relays to '0', then they will essentially not contribute back to the stream at all. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computer network has been an active research area in the past decade. ...
Vorbis is an open and free audio compression (codec) project from the Xiph. ...
Theora is a video codec being developed by the Xiph. ...
Pros Reasons to use Peercast over conventional streaming Technology - Allows any multicasters, particularly small or independent ones, to distribute their streams without need for much bandwidth, saving them costs.
- Allows (in theory) an infinite number of listeners as long as there are enough relays (see below).
- Peercast is completely free to use, in all terms (freedom and beer).
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. ...
Cons While Peercast is a very useful tool for small or independent broadcasters, it also has many flaws. - When a relay is lost, all peers underneath it (might) lose their connection to the stream and must reconnect to another relay.
- When reconnecting to another relay, a peer (might) have to accept the point in the stream the new relay is at, potentially causing a skip or repeat in the stream.
- Since typical relays are just ordinary listeners of the stream, many times their upload bandwidth is unreliable or inefficient to relay the stream.
- The project is currently in beta and is sometimes unstable
- It does not feature Bittorrent-like swarming; if a point node fails, all others in the tree are mute and dead
- Corporate environments and their security policies might not appreciate the fact that it uses peer-to-peer technology and essentially turns listeners by default into servers.
- Since it turns all of the network in a server, distributing content for which you might not have a license could cause legal concerns, depending on the jurisdiction and local legislation the node falls under.
BitTorrent is both the name of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution client application and also the name of the file sharing protocol itself, both of which were created by programmer Bram Cohen. ...
Additional info - Project originated in the summer of 2002.
- Peercast is currently being developed by a single developer (Giles), and is always in need of new help.
- There have been talks of a possible Firefox extension for peercast as well.
External links In software, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes code from a project and starts to develop independently of the rest. ...
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