Neokast and Peer to Peer Streaming

At the Voice/Video on the Net (VON) show last year (2007 March) we met with a group of people from Neokast, the reason we were at the show at all. I had read an article by Robert X. Cringley of PBS a columnist I read fairly religiously.

We were up against the typical problem of video on the internet - bandwidth costs. Streaming the live cameras from the various eagle and other wildlife sites had cost well in excess of $50,000/month the previous season, and we were no longer able to take advantage of the largess of the streaming provider we had previously partnered with, so we were shopping for alternatives.

Neokast at that point was just launching the beta of their streaming server and player, and they were delighted to have us as one of their key providers of content for testing and evaluation of their service. The members of Hancock Wildlife Foundation were given direct access to the beta and feedback from their engineers - and we streamed our cameras live via their site as well as via both our own minimal Windows Media server, and our pay-for-view partner, Insinc.

Neokast has since proven to be endlessly inventive in getting their products ready for prime time - to the point now where they have launched. Their new stream server has been running as many as 10 concurrent, full-time streams from our server for several months now. Recent updates to it have made it very stable and easy to work with - allowing me to add new streams easier than I can add them to our regular web site.

The one fault I have with it at this point is that it only works with Windows Media streams, but I understand that they are working on adding other types.