I want to listen to internet radio while at work; however the IT dept. won't allow on-line access via computer

Question

The reason this is not allowed is due to concerns about use of bandwith. How can I set up and listen to internet radio under the radar of these IM tyrants?

Answer 1

Sorry to tell you this, but there's absolutely NO WAY to get around the IT department's proxy servers (the "gatekeepers" of the network) as they'll prevent access to the ports required for streaming AV streams.

The only place that you MAY sneak by the IT department temporarily (as the IT department will eventually catch onto it) would be Pandora ( http://www.pandora.com ) as it streams its audio through Flash.

Even if you take the lowest possible bitrate for broadcasting (24 KBps), here's how the math would come out:

24 KBps * 3600 sec/hr * 8 hrs = 691,200 KB (691.2 MB) / workday

691.2 MB / workday * 7 days/wk = 4838.4 MB (4.8384 GB) / wk

4.8384 GB / wk * 4 weeks / mo = 19.3536 / mo.

Considering Bandwidth costs $2/GB/mo (high-end), it would cost $38.71 / mo in Bandwidth. You also need to be aware that streaming audio & video constantly requires the a chunk of available bandwidth to use. If your download bandwidth is 700 KBps & the stream you're listen/viewing is 100 KBps, that leaves 600 KBps for everybody on the same connection.

If you multiply the bandwidth requirements over multiple users, it will eventually squeeze the available bandwidth & slow down the speed of others. For example, if you have 10 users on 700 KBps connection & 5 of them are viewing/listening to a 96 KBps audio/video stream. That leaves only 200 KBps available for the other activities. So if everybody is downloading a file at the same time while the streams are active, the downloading speed on that file would average around 20 KBps instead of around 70 KBps.

I know that my examples are in a Micro-network (10 users or less), but in a large-scale network... this could spell massive problems, especially if somebody is telecommuting as their upload speed is affected by the download speed of the server/network they're connecting to.

Why don't you burn an CD full of MP3's (or an audio format you prefer) & play music off of that?

Answer 2

Streaming radio does constantly use bandwidth which a company will have to pay for. Maybe you can work out the cost by the amount of data it streams and how long it is on.

44kbs (reasonable sound quality) *3600 (secs/hour)/1024 (kb per Mb)
= 154.68 Mb streamed per hour of radio
or
around 1.3 Gb of data over 8 hour work day.
around 6.2 Gb of data over 5 day week.

of course this calculation is based on streaming quality and how long the radio is used but this gives you some idea of the costs of bandwidth.

If you used the audio quality I used in the calculation and say only for a couple of hours a day the bandwidth costs would be negotiable.

Answer 3

If I lose my computer, I lose my link with my fiancee! Well, I wouldn't lose email, because I have blackberry, but I would find it very expensive phoning Canada all the time, and I'd probably die if I couldn't see her on MSN frequently! The computer has been vital to booking up our wedding and honeymoon arrangements so far... would have been so mcuh more expensive by phone. SO please don't hack my PC, or disable my connection, kind Mr Bill Gates, or you'll upset two young people very much!

Answer 4

It seems to me that you are locked out. In the past I have used a clever but sophisticated method of bypassing proxy servers using my computer at home as a internet server redirecting my internet requests through that and that's how I was able to surf any site with no restriction. This method will require you to write some software and it may be out of your reach.