"Relaying" video streams

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:06:35 -0500
> From: Bruce Dawson <jbd at codemeta.com>

> We've got several web cams that people like to visit
> (www.milessmithfarm.net). However, they're chewing up bandwidth when
> more than one person at a time views them.
> 
> Is anyone aware of a Linux based video re-broadcaster (either software
> or a service)?

Dearest list, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't this
the sort of application that IPv4 multicast + SIP were designed to
solve?

<anti-flash_rant>I don't think Flash was meant video multicast. Flash
was invented because someone needed to do more damage to Web standards
than IE.</anti-flash_rant>

> We'd like to upload the video streams to a single server that multiple
> people can connect to and view them. This way, we're only sending one
> video stream up to the server, and the server can rebroadcast it to all
> the connected clients.

No matter where the server is, sending a fresh unicast copy to every
client will consume (ie, waste) bandwidth.