Using more cpu but less Bandwidth

[BigAir]

I have a 512kbs upstream at my house, I am wanting to host our clan server at my house but i also need bandwidth to play. I have a few high power computers I dont use much of. A dual 1ghz with a gig of ram (is TS smp?) and a amd 1.33ghz with 512 ram. Is there a way to take advantage of thier cpu cycles to compress audio into a single stream? If it would require even more cpu i could always put together a xp3000.

From my understanding TS is designed to reduce latency and cpu usage, but if I have fast enough cpu's could i use them? I searched for the answer to this question but did not find an answer. Thank you in advance.

Bigair

[Peter]

The thing you are asking for is server-side mixing. TS2 does not support this (in fact, the TS2 Server does _nothing_ with sound streams, except to pass them on to the people that should hear them).
The main disadvantages of server-side mixing are:

- Increased CPU usage on the server side
- Increased Latency
- reduction of sound quality

The pros are:
- less upload bandwidth usage on server side

Now, the latency con will be present all the time, the pro of server-side mixing only kicks in when more than one guy is speaking at the same moment...something that is probably not a great thing anyways (its hard to understand two people talking over each other). Then add the reduced sound quality [since you put two sound streams into one], and you probably can't understand anything anymore :/.
So, I think that the best way to fix the problem is not to do server side mixing, but to rather only allow one (or maybe two) guy(s) to speak at once. For TS3 we are planning to add such a setting; but there is also something similar possible with TS2:
If everybody that joins your server limits his download bandwidth to something thats a bit more than the channel codec you use (e.g. 12.3 KBit codec, limit to 14 or 15 or something), then the server side will not send more than one "sound stream" to each player. So what happens if two people are speaking, then you will only hear the one that started first - until he stops, then you will be able to hear the second.

[BigAir]

Thanks for info, helps alot

[DragonD]

Could this work server-side eg: limit the upload bandwidth per ip?
I think that would be much eiaser then relying on everyone to set a limit.

-dragon

[guldi]

maybe not per IP (with NAT you may have more then one user behind oen IP) but maybe per connection. And what would be the benefit ? You'd lose voice streams