Glossary
This page contains definitions for most of the terms used on the Stream Alerts website in alphabetical order. If you can’t find a definition, let us know and we’ll put it on here.
| Additional Streams | The cost for each individual stream in a customer’s account, not including the first stream. |
| Availability Monitoring | A service that periodically checks to see if a specific stream or file is available to end users, i.e. checks to see if a visitor can connect to and consume the stream. Does not play through the entire stream. |
| Banner | A Stream Alerts banner that is displayed on a customer’s web page. Required for Free Monitoring accounts. |
| Base Cost | The cost for the first stream in a users account. If an account only has one stream, this is the amount the customer will be charged. |
| CDN | Content Delivery Network - Usually a hosting service who has multiple servers that can provide the endpoint connecction for your stream users. |
| Contacts | An email address that alerts should be sent to when there is a problem with a stream. |
| Content | The actual media content that end users view consists of an on-demand file or stream containing audio and/or video data. |
| Control Panel | The interface users access to configure monitoring services including streams, contacts and billing information. |
| Encoder | A computer that takes audio and video data from a live source or from a playlist and converts it into a format suitible for streaming. The data is usually sent to a streaming server for distribution. |
| Flash | A rich web technology from Adobe that allows for high-quality streaming of audio and video directly in a browser window. The Flash plugin is installed on millions of computers, allowing for wide compatibility. Most On-Demand content, such as videos on YouTube, are hosted in a Flash format. |
| Login Accounts | An account that allows a user to access the Stream Alerts Control Panel to view and/or modify account settings. |
| HTTP | Hypter Text Transfer Protocol is used mostly for web pages but also allows streams to reach users behind tight security systems. See Wikipedia |
| MMS | Microsoft Media Services is a protocol mosly used by Windows Media Services Server to serve Windows Media streams. See Wikipedia |
| Monitoring Frequency | How often a particular stream is checked in minutes or seconds. |
| Monitoring History | A page that displays the daily test history of a particular stream for a user selectable period. |
| MSBD | Media Stream Broadcast Distribution a protocol used by Windows Media Services. |
| On Demand | A file or stream where the content begins any time that a user makes a request. Different from a live stream where the user joins in the middle of the content. |
| Payload Monitoring | A method of monitoring the actual audio and/or video content of a stream. This allows for alerting on audio silence or overload and video freezing. |
| Ping Monitoring | A type of monitoring that checks to see if a particular server or computer is able to respond to ICMP requests. |
| Playlist | A text or XML file that contains a list of different media files or streams for a client program to play. These can also contain meta-data, i.e. more information about the media listed within. |
| RTMP | Real Time Messaging Protocol is a proprietary method of streaming Flash files in real time. See Wikipedia |
| RTSP | Real Time Streaming Protocol is a popular streaming protocol used by many servers. See Wikipedia |
| Shoutcast |
A proprietary streaming server created by NullSoft and now managed by America Online that is often used for distributing MP3 streams to various Internet Radios and iTunes. Link |
| SMS |
Short Message Service, a means of sending small test messages to cell phones. See Wikipedia |
| Stream | An audio only or video stream that is sent to users via a streaming protocol. Streams are sent in "real time" and play as the information is received as opposed to downloading content where data is sent to a computer and files are played after the entire file has arrived. |
| Stream Group | In the Control Panel, you can assign individual streams and contacts to a stream group for quick enabling or alerting of the entire group. |
| Stream Server | A server that recieves data from an encoder and then broadcasts the data to various clients. Servers can support hundreds to thousands of users. |
| URL | A web address that tells computers where to find a specific stream. |
| XML Status | A page that displays current information about a user’s streams in an XML format accessible from other websites or programs. |