One of your vary basical needs, is a reliable Internet connection. There are few things that could cause big interferences with your transmission, up to the point where you will be not able to stream at all!
Find out who is a person that "really" knows something about the connection and ask him/her these few questions (if he/she has no idea about what you are asking than this is definetly not a reliable source!)
- is the connection stable?
- what is the downstream (or download) capability?
- what is the upstream (or upload) capability?
- is there a DHCP (automatic address assignement) service?
- are there a lot of other people and computers you have to share the connection with?
- is there a strict firewall which could recognize the streaming as an unfriendly network service?
Don't panic! Further in the course we will deeper analize what downstream and upstream, DHCP and firewalls are!
By now, be sure that the connection is stable (it does not comes and goes), and that, if at the time you have choosen for your streaming session, the connection will not be over-exploited by other users which could be downloading music (P2P programs or similar) or useing an Internet-telephon service (VOIP). If so, than be sure that while you are streaming they please shut down or do not use these programs. Of course, if you are in a place haveing a big computer network, like a university, a media-lab or a corporation business you will not face such a problem.
While the absence of a DHCP service is not a basic requirement for your steaming session, a strict firewall could prevent you from streaming. In the normal case you will not be facing a firewall "keeping your stream door shut", but, mostly in a corporation facility, they don't want people to use the Internet for something that has not to do with the work itself. In this case, after an unsuccesfully tried to make a probe stream, you'll have to speak with a network administrator so that he/she can open this door for your needs.
The upstream/downstream margin you can rely to could also be a big interference to your transmission project. A minimal requirement is 50kbit/s, preferrable would be 100kbit/s, being, in this second case, certain to avoid confrontation with so called "streaming bottlenecks".
So, once you cleared these questions, you will know if you are going to be able to stream or not. Relying to the questions above the following answers:
- not stable connection
- upstream connection smaller than 80kbit/s (10KB/s) for music, 40kbit/s (5KB/s) for speech
- impossibility to change a firewall which blocks streaming connections