Are audio/video streams a P2P connection? Does having more participants sharing video require additional bandwidth?

On Digital Samba, both audio and video streams are sent through a media server—not a P2P connection.

More participants will use more bandwidth, though. While each broadcaster, by default, sends a stream at 512 kbps, we cap each room at 3,072 kbps. If you experience issues with specific users when adding more participants, it is very likely a bandwidth issue. 

This room cap works like this:

  1. 6 broadcasters x 512 kbps = 3,072 kbps (no capping is done with that amount of participants).
  2. If you introduce a 7th broadcaster, we reduce each broadcaster stream by 50% - so 7 x 256kbps = 1,792 kbps. You can keep adding broadcastings until the total is greater than 3,072 kbps.
  3. Each time you cross the 3,072 threshold, the broadcaster stream gets halved again (to 128 kbps), and so on.