[Nfb-web] Wireless Streaming

[Olivero, Tony]

Peter,

I was able to use the hotel's wireless to provide the stream.
Interestingly, the upstream bandwidth appeared to be more stable than
the downstream as we were, for the most part, consistently able to
stream, but webpages and other general internet tasks were frustratingly
slow.

I don't know what format you were using, but I sent out an ogg vorbis
stream which has the advantage of greater fidelity at lower bandwidths.
The quality we used is approximately what a 64k MP3 stream sounds like,
but generally used anywhere from 57-61k of bandwidth (I forget the
overhead on an MP3 stream, but I believe a 64k audio stream uses
somewhere around 70k of total bandwidth). The only disadvantage this
caused was people who only had Windows Media Player were not able to
listen as WMP does not seem to stream .ogg files. I unfortunately didn't
realize this until Friday when it was too late to change the m3u file on
the affiliate's site to point to an mp3 stream. I would still like to
use the ogg format next year and plan to either put information on the
site about downloading Winamp or use a third party relay to transcode
and rebroadcast the stream in an alternate format. (I'm blanking on the
one I know is out there, but I've got it bookmarked somewhere and can
share it if there is interest.)

This was my first actual experience streaming a "for real" live event
and Here are a couple of things I learned.

1) Have the ability to control the file pointing to the final stream
location. I provided our webmaster a copy of an m3u file that linked to
the ogg stream and had him put that file on our server and link to it. I
should have put the m3u on a server I could access (allowing me to make
changes if necessary). If I had done that, I could have easily converted
to an MP3 stream when I realized the OGG couldn't be played by some
users and would have also had the ability to switch stream providers if
our host had some sort of major malfunction.

2) Have some sort of heartbeat/notification mechanism to alert when the
stream goes down (I wasn't in front of the computer the entire weekend).
During the banquet we lost the stream for about 11 minutes because the
hotel's wireless timed out and I had to reaccept the Terms of Service.
This was fortunately early enough in the banquet that not much was
missed, but I only discovered it had gone down when I was unable to pull
up the feed stats on my cell phone. Idealy, there would be a way to get
a text message when the feed dropped so it could be quickly
reestablished. (This should be accomplishable by having the stream
computer "touch" a file on a remote server and having that remote server
send an e-mail if it doesn't get updated in a specified amount of time.
I just need to code it.)

>From the statistics I was seeing, we averaged about 5-6 users for the
entire convention period. This is about 14 hours and just over 1.5
gigabytes of bandwidth used. Not too bad. the cost for the server rental
was $8.99 and it would have allowed us to go up to 25GB of bandwidth
without having to purchase additional. Someone other than me will have
to speak to what the quality sounded like as a listener, but the times
when I pulled it up on the computer to monitor, or on my iPhone when I
had to leave the room, it seemed to be reasonable. (We did have some
distortion issues Friday, but I believe those were corrected by the
Saturday sessions).

I hope this answers some of your questions. Please let me know if there
are others I can assist with.

Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-web-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-web-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Peter Donahue
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 13:00
To: nfb-web at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Nfb-web] Wireless Streaming

Hello everyone,

    Several weeks ago Mary and I flew to Kansas to broadcast our Kansas 
Affiliate's 2009 State Convention. Like the hotel our Maryland Affiliate

used the hotel in Salina Kansas would not give us a hard-wire connection
nor 
were they sure there was a dataport in their main convention meeting
room. 
Several attempts were made by NFBKS Members to obtain this information
to no 
avail. We were left with only one option; use a wireless Internet
connection 
for the convention broadcast.

    I borrowed a wireless card and a cable for establishing an in-room 
hard-wire connection from the hotel but ended up not using it. I was
able to 
use their wireless card in our hotel room but not in the room where the 
convention general sessions were being held. Disgusted I plugged in my
AT&T 
uVerse Card and made a connection on Friday afternoon. One of our
members 
back in San Antonio monitored content I broadcast for a test stream to
see 
if the connection would hold. The connection held for three hours until
I 
terminated it when I shut the laptop down for the evening. This brings
us to 
Saturday morning.

        I successfully connected again on Saturday morning prior to the 
opening general session. All seemed to be working as expected. It was
not 
until we returned home that we learned that those that attempted to hear
the 
broadcast would hear several seconds or minutes of the convention
sessions 
before they lost the connection. Another problem further complicating 
matters was our inability to contact individuals I asked to be 
"Streamcheckers" to determine if we were getting out or if we were just 
pushing out dead air. The cell phone service in the Salina area is
terrible 
to say the least. Many convention attendees with cell phones reported
having 
similar difficulties when attempting to reach other attendees or folks
back 
home. Were it not for the fact that I successfully recorded their
general 
sessions this would have turned in to another streaming "Suaside
Mission." 
I'll be posting these recordings on the NFBKS Web Site next weekend.

    Having failed being able to broadcast the NFBKS Convention using a 
wireless connection I listened with interest to the NFB of Maryland's 
Convention last weekend. Like the NFBKS Convention broadcast the NFBMD 
Broadcast was done using a wireless Internet connection. I listened for
a 
while last Friday and heard a portion of the new Youth SLAM Video on
Sunday 
Morning without the connection going down. I'd like to hear from Lloyd, 
Tony, or someone in Maryland who was responsible for broadcasting their
2009 
Convention to compare notes and pick up some tips and tricks to insure
that 
when necessary I'll be able to broadcast future NFB events over a
wireless 
connection with success. At this point the only theory I have to explain

Maryland's success and our failure is the fact that Ocean City Maryland
and 
the Carousel Hotel have far more robust wireless networks and hot spots
and 
reliable cell phone service than we had in Salina Kansas which is
located an 
hour and a half north of Wichita in no man's land.

        It's my hope that the collective experience we gain in
broadcasting 
federation events via wireless Internet connections will enable such
events 
to be streamed successfully. If reliable methods for doing this can be
found 
this will eliminate the need for hard-wire connections and the expenses 
associated with their use. At many of the larger hotels the costs for
such 
connections and dataport use can be quite hefty! But given the 
unpredictability of wifi I'd still air on the side of using hard-wire 
connections if the price is right but if we're forced to use wireless 
Internet for broadcasting NFB events we need to know we can be
successful 
and that these events will be heard or viewed by those wishing to enjoy 
them. I'll look forward to hearing feedback from folks in Maryland or
anyone 
else who streamed an NFB event via wifi.

Peter Donahue



 "Will you come and awake our lost land from its slumber
      And her fetters we'll break, links that long are encumbered.
      And the air will resound with hosannas to greet you
      On the shore will be found gallant Irishmen to greet you."
Will You Come to the Bower
Traditional Irish Folk Song


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