Netstream is a simple streamer with one input and many outputs. Input and outputs could be files, sockets or standard input/output. Streaming is parallel and can be restarted on failure.

Netstream is designed for a parallel streaming of a music or video from one source to many receivers. Because of it, netstream is not designed for a lossless data transmission, on a slow connection some data can be dropped. The order of the data does not change.

Required libraries: libyaml (http://pyyaml.org/wiki/LibYAML)

To compile run

$ make

netstream binary will be created.

For simple use, just run ./netstream. It will use netstream.conf as configuration file and start working.

• -c <file> use file as a configuration file
• -d run as a daemon
• -v [level] set verbosity (0 - quiet, 7 - most verbose)
• -t only test connection to neighbours and exit

Configuration file is written in YAML. It is an array of mappings. Each mapping describes one input or output. There can be only 1 input. Maximal number of outputs is defined by a constant MAX_OUTPUTS in the source.

Compulsory keys for any endpoint

• Direction: input or output
• Type: socket,file or std

Optional keys for any endpoint

• Retry: yes for retrying after failure, no for exit after failure (default) and ignore for don't exit and don't retry after failure

Compulsory keys for Type: socket:

• Name: hostname or IP of the target computer
• Port: port number
• Protocol: TCP or UDP

Optional keys for Type: socket and Protocol: TCP:

• Keepalive: send TCP keepalive every n seconds

Compulsory keys for Type: file:

• Name: filename

If there is a syntax error in config or some compulsory keys are missing, program will exit with error. Unnecessary keys are ignored.

When the Retry key is set to yes for some endpoint, then after EOF or error is the socket or file closed and netstream tries to open it again until it succeeds. There is a delay between tries.

When the Retry key is set to ignore, then after a failure is the socket or file closed and it is not used anymore.

If the Type key has a value std, netstream reads or writes to standard input or output.

When Keepalive is not set or it is set to 0, system default keepalive is used.

There are some simple tests in the test/ directory. The tests covers:

1. from file to file
2. from file to TCP connection
3. from file to UDP connection (tries at most 10 times)
4. from TCP connection to TCP connection
5. from UDP to UDP connection
6. from file to more files
7. from file to multiple files
8. exit unsuccessfully on wrong config file

Tests can be started by a ./run_tests command.

Test are not rock-solid, failure of the test can be caused by too slow flushing buffers, it is recommended to re-run tests to make sure.