Hello, I have been a Administrator and Webmaster of many HTTP based servers over the past 8+ Years. I have finally decided to retire from basic web server management out of bordem, and the simple fact that internet communites aren't what they use to be(and fairly hard to establish without some form of consumer functionality.)
The thing that triggered this is seeing advertisements and streams from shoutcast servers. There is a steadly rising trend with mainstream web hosts to offer media streaming services. Although the capabilitys are considerably weak for the money you pay for the service(ex: 1month of 10 listener 28Kbps at $40 US.)
I plan on establishing well rounded programming and trying my hand at TCP/IP radio engineering for the next year. That role is basiclly a Administrator with some HAM terminology thrown in the mix.
The reason I plan on paying a 3rd party for hosting is that to have a practical amount of stream bandwidth such as 28Kbps(AM Radio quality audio,) that supports more than 5-10 listeners, you'de literally have to have a 5Mbps upstream on your home connection.
example:
28.000 / 5.000.000 = 5
Anyone who has to pay for Broadband internet access knows even the cheap stuff is pricey. There is -NO- residential Broadband service that offers anything above a 800Kbps upstream. There is the buisness solutions, but the prices are so extreme they render themselves useless.
I post this to perhaps raise interest with other admins and webmasters. The more clients the cheaper the prices. I also noticed the hosting companys that offer Shoutcast Hosting won't let you pay annually, maybe they aren't sure of the stability of the solutions.
Media Streaming Solutions 
Linear Mode
