[WXBH-Discuss] ISDN and DSL and 802 as microwave link

[Cory R]

Paul,

This discussion needs to be made in the Technical mailing list.

It's a big mess any way you look at it.  ISDN is slow, at the last meeting
it sounded as if everyone just wanted to upload mp3's to the server, which
would be ok if we weren't broadcasting live and we had a multiple day buffer
time, that would actually allow for us to get dsl and whatnot.  Iglou is
running a deal for 1.5mb/256kb at $29.95/mo, which would be quite nice.
Since the antenna location wouldn't need any significant upload.

By speed on the 802.11 link I was referring to overall bandwidth and latency
times.  I'm really unsure how fast microwave is now but last I checked
(probably 6+ years ago) it was sitting around 5mbps.  The idea location
would be at the Brick House or near a surrounding building.  So we would
skip the internet completely.  Although I'll start looking for ISDN modems
and looking at software for that.  Seeing that we're wanting to do internet
radio (I'll actually be setting up an icecast server sometime today) also,
it will probably be just as easy to pull that stream down from the web at
the antenna location rather than streaming it over the ISDN.

As far as encoding audio, I would either recommend mp3, or ogg vorbis (
http://www.vorbis.com/) formats rather than mp4.  Licensing issues aside I
think for practical reasons it would be alot better to just stick with mp3
and/or ogg.  Something interesting I found on the net was
http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/.   I don't see a need to use the
mp4 format on what we're doing anyway since it may require licensing and
since radio isn't exactly the highest quality of sound anyway.  I'd say
stick to mp3 or ogg vorbis.

Cory


On 5/31/06, topdog at woofer.com <topdog at woofer.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Cory,
>
> ISDN is an Integrated Subscriber Digital Network.  It could be used to get
> to
> the internet - but it is actually a digital line provided by the telephone
> company.  As I understand it, it is not a "dedicated" line (you still have
> to
> dial a phone number (or SPID) but once a connection is 3established, it
> will be
> linked at that speed indefinitely.
>
> The 802.11 link would not be any faster than microwave.  Both are moving
> at the
> speed of light.  The main advantage is that the equipment would be much
> cheaper
> (and safer) than microwaves.  We could build our own antennas for that
> part of
> it too.  Some people have modified Pringles cans.  But that link is only
> going
> to work Line of Sight - and you can't try to stop anyone who is building
> something in your way.  I think that the Kentucky Towers across the street
> is
> the only feasible way to do line of sight communications.  It is possible
> that
> Ky Towers might have a view of the "flashcube" building but not likely
> given
> their distance apart and heights.  Even if they did, we would have to get
> permission from the Tower to use it as a "hop" point. No sense in paying 2
> places for rent.
>
> I still think that ISDN would be our best (and cheapest) bet for now. If
> you
> can, use your talents to find some ISDN modems and a codec
> algorithm.  ISDN is
> very slow next to DSL so a high compression algorithm is need to code and
> decode.  I hear that MP4 is quite nice but I don't know if it needs to be
> commecially licensed for use...  If you could find out, that would be
> great.
>
> Paul
>
>
> --
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