[Kevin Sevcik]

I believe the trick to your idea would be getting a server/hosting solution with enough grunt to handle the hordes of rabid FIRSTers mobbing it. I can't imagine that getting that much bandwidth for even a month would be cheap. Very rough calculations on my part indicate that a server with 1000 GB per month of transfers could serve up around 700 128kbps streams for 24 hours. I'm not smart enough to take overhead, etc. into account. Anywyas, it looks like that'd run you $150 for a single month. and that's a server with just 512 MB ram and a 2.4GHz Celeron Processor. I couldn't tell ya if that could handle serving that many streams. I don't even know if their connection can handle that much. I'm sure you've noticed that FIRST teams routinely crash the usfirst.org servers and that the streams coming from NASA occassionally drop or get choppy. And that's NASA.

So, I'm somewhat skeptical that a team could set up a completely independent webcast. I think a more productive approach would be to work with your local regional and NASA to get a webcast. I believe the real problem with NASA webcasting regional is that they typically have to fly someone out to the regional to set up the equipment. If a team with good technical know-how could persuade their local regional to pay for the necessary internet connection or ISDN lines and the webcasting equipment, then NASA would probably work with them on getting the webcast up. (Note: I don't speak for NASA, but this is how I understand things work.)