[webcast-l] Broadband Providers

[Bill Best]

Hi

Yes there's not much more I can add to what Nick says below:

Nick Blower wrote:
> 
> Should have mentioned as well to have a look at ThinkBroadband (formally
> ADSL-Guide) @ http://www.thinkbroadband.com/
> It's will be focused more around home user and gamers but mostly any service
> that rates highly for a gamer will be good for streaming. Look for low
> latency, no download caps (or high), good support and issue resolution. Also
> spending a bit more and getting a lower contention ratio may help (the
> number of people sharing the same theoretical bandwidth. Business accounts
> are often 20:1 and home 50:1 but you'll pay for it.

I have not heard any reports from our webcasters of problems with any
particular ISP.

My home ISP is Telewest/Blueyonder/NTL/Virgin (whoever they happen to be
this week...) and I have no upload/download cap and service has been
faultless - though I don't do a great deal of streaming media work from
home.

The ISP that the CMA uses for the streaming servers is Avensys Networks
based in Sheffield who have a prominent presence in Telehouse in the
London Docklands through which the majority of the UK's internet transit
is still carried.

We chose Avensys as our ISP for a number of reasons and they
consistently rank highly in this list of ISP performance:

http://www.webperf.net/?id=perfsummary

Avensys also have extensive peering agreements with most ISP's through
the UK's network peering exchanges: LINX, LONAP, MANAP and LIPEX:

Avensys (8553)
http://www.linx.net/www_public/our_members/peering_matrix

This means that internet traffic between peering partners is routed
faster and more efficiently.

In terms of data upload the CMA recommends a minimum bitrate of 34kbps
for FM quality webcasting. So a few calculations might be interesting:

34kbps x 3600 = 122400 kilobits per hour

122400 x 24 = 2937600 kilobits per day

2937600 x 30 = 88128000 kilobits per (30 day) month

= 88.128Gb transfer per month

= 11GB upload per month

The above calculations do not account for any other network use and just
represents a 34kbps stream that is run 24/7.

Most ISP's seem to be mostly concerned with download usage and it is
difficult to find figures for upload caps but what is most important for
streaming is upload speed.  Upload speeds are usually set at about 10%
of download speeds and for broadband the slowest upload speed is
normally about 256kbps which is quite adequate for the example stream
above even allowing for network overheads.

It would be sensible to assume however that an ISP offering 'unlimited'
downloads would also offer 'unlimited' uploads - I use quotation marks
advisedly as ISP's will always have a 'fair use' clause.  A quick search
for 'unlimited broadband' brings up a number of sites including this one:

http://www.broadbandchecker.co.uk/broadband-checker.html

So, apart from AOL whose service provision is often reported to be a
little uneven, there would probably be few problems using any of the
ISP's mentioned in the above link.

Hope that helps and best regards

Bill Best
-- 
Community Media Association
http://www.commedia.org.uk/