Just What Is A Webcast Provider?
A webcast provider is a type of service supplier that allows clients to host streaming webcasts of media files. They manage the needed equipment capital and infrastructure to facilitate the ability of their clients to create and maintain webcasts. They are technically hosting services, similar to ordinary hosting services for internet websites, with the important distinction of being able to reliably host streaming media files. A webcast provider needs to be able to reliably supply clients with the bandwidth needed to sustain a webcast to a large online audience. There are hundreds of providers all over the world, notable examples of which are WorldStream, I-Beam, RBN, Akamai, Pinnacle Systems Cast Connect.Com, and many others.
A webcast provider will need to use programs that permit efficient and effective webcasting in order to make servicing clients possible. Examples of such a suite of programs specifically designed for webcasting is StreamFactory and StreamGenie. They also need to have the hardware and facilities needed to make reliable data streaming to a large audience possible. Also, each webcast provider will often offer different services than their competitors, in order to differentiate themselves from each other in the market. However, most if not all will require some basic information from their clients, due to the fact that different clients have different webcasting needs, so accordingly, a webcast provider will have to provide different solutions.
The information a webcast provider will ask of a prospective webcaster will often be concerning scheduling, webcast length, and streaming media file delivery issues among other things. The rationale for the need for scheduling and webcast length information is quite similar to the concept of television and radio networks selling block time. A Webcast provider needs to know when it should dedicate its infrastructure for a client and for how long it should do it. This allows the provider to be able to service more clients efficiently without scheduling conflicts. Also, the length of a webcast will most likely be the determining factor on how much a provider will charge its clients. Streaming file delivery issues are slightly more complex. Both the client and the webcast provider have to take into account the nature of the media file being streamed, with the speed or bit rate of the internet connection of the client being quite important. Even more important will be the expected speed of the internet connections of the intended audience. Also to be considered are the number of streams a client desires, and security issues. More streams will more often need more bandwidth ad firewalls and other internet security elements will have to be put in place to prevent online attacks and checked to for compatibility issues with the webcast provider, client, and most of the target audience. Occasionally, some clients will need to rent bigger bandwidth connections, or truck satellite connections in areas with insufficient internet connectivity infrastructure to increase their uploading speed since for large volumes of data, the upload speed of Direct Service Line or DSL connections are mostly insufficient.
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