PeerCast is an open_source streaming media multicast tool. PeerCast uses peer to peer technology to minimize the necessary upload bandwidth for the original multicastor. See also Peercasting.
Peercast is released under the GNU General Public License and is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. The peercast source code is available from http://www.peercast.org/code.
*Warning: The peercast plugin on [http://winamp.com/plugins/details.phpid=131235 Winamp.com] is old and broken and may cause many problems.
= How Peercast works =
Peercast can be used to multicast streaming audio (Vorbis, Mp3, WMA) and/or video (Theora, Nullsoft Video, or WMV), or any other stream of data, over the internet. Peercast uses a distributed bandwidth technique to lighten the load of the broadcaster s upstream bandwidth where each listener/viewer will relay the stream they download to one or more additional listeners. Users may choose how many relays to allow, and if a listener sets their relays to 0 , then they will essentially not contribute back to the stream at all.
= Pros =
Reasons to use Peercast over conventional streaming Technology
Allows any multicasters, particularly small or independent ones, to distribute their streams without need for much bandwidth, saving them costs.
Allows (in theory) an infinite number of listeners as long as there are enough relays (see below).
Peercast is completely free to use, in all terms (Free_software).
= Cons =
While [http://www.peercast.org Peercast] is a very useful tool for small or independent broadcasters, it also has many flaws.
When a relay is lost, all peers underneath it (might) lose their connection to the stream and must reconnect to another relay.
When reconnecting to another relay, a peer (might) have to accept the point in the stream the new relay is at, potentially causing a skip or repeat in the stream.
Since typical relays are just ordinary listeners of the stream, many times their upload bandwidth is unreliable or inefficient to relay the stream.
The project is currently in beta and is sometimes unstable
It does not feature BitTorrent-like swarming; if a point node fails, all others in the tree are mute and dead
= Additional info =
Project originated in the summer of 2002.
Peercast is currently being developed by a single developer (Giles), and is always in need of new help.
There have been talks of a possible Firefox extension for peercast as well.
= External links =
[http://peercast.org Official Site]
[http://www.peercast.org/forum Peercast forums]
[http://takuo.jp/gnome-peercast/ Gnome Peercast] is a GUI frontend for Linux users (the official version is only command line)
There is also a Japan based Fork_(software) of the project which can be found [http://sourceforge.jp/projects/peercast-jp/ here]
== Similar projects ==
IceShare ([http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/IceShare Xiph Foundation])
[http://www.freecast.org FreeCast]