[PLUG] Video Stream "forwarder"??? (possibly off topic?)

[jazzman@exdomain.org]

Sorry to all if this is way off topic, but it's linux related so I wanted 
to ask here first. I just picked up a linksys wireless internet camera 
pretty cheap. I use it to keep an eye on my saltwater aquarium while i'm 
at work and what not. It's an amusing little toy that delivers video via a 
.asf stream. Linksys attached 2 limitations to this camera...
1)You MUST be running IE 5.5 or higher AND windows to use the camera
2) The Camera only supports 4 connections at a time.

The first limitation was easy enough to overcome. The camera runs a linux 
variant (source code available from linksys with compilers!) and the httpd 
just streams from http://cameras_ip_address/img/video.asf. All you need to 
do is point to that address and off you go.

The second limitation is more troubling... I have the video feed linked 
from my website, so every user who views the feed on my website counts as 
an active connection to the camera. Since you can only really view the 
camera from my website (without me opening a port to the camera on my 
router) I was hoping there was a way to have a constant connection from my 
server to the camera... just the one connection, and then all incoming 
connections could take the feed from the local "proxy/forwarder" which 
could handle as many connections as system resources allow... sort of like 
this:
			 ->client
			/
 Camera ----> Forwarder -->client
			\
			 ->client


Does anyone know of a program to do this, or would i be on my own for 
writnig this? Anyone know anything about asf streams and what i'd need to 
do to make such a program? I know how to do network coding, it's what i do 
for a living more or less, but i'm not sure what kind of handling i'd have 
to do for an asf stream in terms of what happens when a client first 
connects...

Any help/advice is much appreciated.

Thanks
Marc

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