A mount point, in streaming media systems, is a virtual resource which references live or on-demand content within a multimedia media server system. Mount points are used to allow multimedia servers the ability to control multiple content sources and/or types on the same server instance. The mount point name is typically determined in the path location portion of a URI. Channel content and attributes can be stored with mount point definitions and kept separate of global and other mount point settings and limits. This term in streaming media was popularized by the Icecast server and is used in many software products that support it and others like it.
Publishing points
The Microsoft Windows Media Server makes use of a similar feature which it calls publishing points. Like Unix multimedia servers, it allows multiple channels to be defined simply by assigning them a publishing point which establishes the channel's virtual path on the server system.
