Internet radio: is broadcast traffic being optimized?

Question

Computer networks

If the audio server sends two identical streams to two clients, then it would be efficient to clone the original stream not to the audio server, but to the Internet router - the common and closest one for both clients.

Question: does such optimization work in practice? For shoutcast/icecast servers, for example. Do I need to do something non-standard to “fasten” it.

Pluses for the server: the load on the processor is reduced, the network interface is unloaded, traffic is reduced. For the rest of the participants in the scheme, nothing seems to change.

Answer 1

This thing is called Multicast .
And, broadcast is still not at all what you describe. What you are describing is a standard unicast (one stream to one client, +1 client - +1 stream). In a broadcast, the data goes to everyone at once, but the broadcast does not propagate above L2 or L3 (see broadcast wiki ) , i.e. is not applicable within the Internet, but is used only in local networks. Multicast can work both at the level of local networks, and at a higher level of the entire Internet. But, as far as I know, multicast is quite cumbersome to organize in technical terms (that is, it’s not a stupid checkmark on the broadcast server), and not all pros (not all routers) eat such traffic (although I could be wrong in this regard, for a long time did not dig).