{"id":51337,"date":"2012-06-03T09:56:15","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T07:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=51337"},"modified":"2012-06-04T14:10:06","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T12:10:06","slug":"interwebsradio-sa-streaming-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/51337-interwebsradio-sa-streaming-radio.html","title":{"rendered":"Interwebsradio: SA streaming radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interwebsradio<\/a>, a streaming radio station operating from South Africa,\u00a0was recently added to the\u00a0iTunes<\/a>\u00a0Radio catalogue under the Alternative Rock section.<\/p>\n

Before getting listed in iTunes the radio station was already available on just about any computer and modern mobile device through its website and other streaming radio collections such as TuneIn Radio.<\/p>\n

But just what does it take to run a radio station on the \u201cInterweb\u201d from South Africa?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are bootstrapping our station from open-source software, a little pocket change and an insane love of music,\u201d Interwebaradio\u2019s Dirk Hanekom recently told us.<\/p>\n

Asked whether the station is making money, Hanekom said that they aren\u2019t showing a profit yet and joked that sponsors and advertisers are welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeriously though, we do have a number of advertisers in the pipeline once we start showing real listenership figures,\u201d Hanekom said.<\/p>\n

The technology<\/h3>\n

Interwebsradio streams from servers in Germany, Hanekom said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also have a development server located in the US for most of our testing and monitoring purposes,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome would call that the \u2018Cloud\u2019. We call it server hosting in a top-end redundant data centre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanekom said that the high cost of hosting in South Africa forced them to make a choice between a little more latency and price.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lower price won,\u201d Hanekom said.<\/p>\n

\"Interwebsradio<\/a><\/p>\n

The service they receive in Germany is \u201cridiculously cheap\u201d by comparison, Hanekom said, explaining that they get 5 Terabytes of data transfer per month before they get throttled to a \u201cslower\u201d speed of 10Mbps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aim to hit that target,\u201d Hanekom said. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanekom said that they would love to have a local server proxying content closer to SA listeners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll get there, but the ISPs need to come to the party first,\u201d Hanekom said.<\/p>\n

If Interwebsradio decided to use overseas hosting services to cut down on costs, just how much bandwidth do they use?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s early days, so not nearly enough,\u201d Hanekom said before breaking it down:<\/p>\n