Intermittency with the 128k stream

[deSousa]

Hi everyone,

I've been a patron for about a year and all this time have been an happy listener of the 128k stream. The whole period I've been using a mobile broadband connection which is supposed to provide me with 256 kB/s downloads. Though mobile, I always connect within the same geographic area, between home and work.

Lately it has became progressively harder to listen to the 128k stream, it goes often intermittent with 10 seconds of music and 3/4 seconds of silence while the media player buffers. During the last few days this intermittency has become permanent.

Watching the system monitor with no other programs connected to the internet, the network usage graph oscillates between 4 kB/s and 20 kB/s. I went checking at SpeedTest.net my connection speed and got these results:

Download: 1.34 Mb/s
Upload: 0.32 Mb/s

While not spectacular, this figures should be more than enough for the 128k stream.

Any ideas on what can I do further to solve this? Any changes to the Moon lately that may have caused this?

Thank you.

[OverHillandDale(Admin)]

I occasionally have this issue, but it is NOT the streaming server itself. It is typically caused via your provider's system via heavy traffic or usage. Weather betwix you and our source can also have an effect.

Sometimes you system internet may need to be flushed, so to speak. A couple ways to do that is reboot your provider modem and network modem if you have one. Another way if using a windows based machine is to use ipconfig /release, and /renew. This re-established your address and will clear up some issues.

Please correct me if I'm incorrect all you computer nerds out there.

Originally Posted by deSousa

Hi everyone,

I've been a patron for about a year and all this time have been an happy listener of the 128k stream. The whole period I've been using a mobile broadband connection which is supposed to provide me with 256 kB/s downloads. Though mobile, I always connect within the same geographic area, between home and work.

Lately it has became progressively harder to listen to the 128k stream, it goes often intermittent with 10 seconds of music and 3/4 seconds of silence while the media player buffers. During the last few days this intermittency has become permanent.

Watching the system monitor with no other programs connected to the internet, the network usage graph oscillates between 4 kB/s and 20 kB/s. I went checking at SpeedTest.net my connection speed and got these results:

Download: 1.34 Mb/s
Upload: 0.32 Mb/s

While not spectacular, this figures should be more than enough for the 128k stream.

Any ideas on what can I do further to solve this? Any changes to the Moon lately that may have caused this?

Thank you.

[deSousa]

Sorry for my week long disappearance, but professional issues got in the way.

Since I'm using a mobile broadband connection, I'll now do some tests using it at different places and at of-work hours.

Btw, I'm on Ubuntu Linux.

[OverHillandDale(Admin)]

Originally Posted by deSousa

Sorry for my week long disappearance, but professional issues got in the way.

Since I'm using a mobile broadband connection, I'll now do some tests using it at different places and at of-work hours.

Btw, I'm on Ubuntu Linux.

Using mobile broadband can also cause great fluctuation in signal strength and bandwidth. If there is any way you can increase the size of your streaming buffer - that may help. Say from 30 sec. to 60 perhaps. See if that helps.

Vax is certainly way more qualified to speak on broadband mobile as he uses that.

[VAXman(Admin)]

FYI and all concerned/interested:

The patron streams are broadcast directly from the Aural Moon streaming server. The other, non-patron streams, are handled by replication servers which connect to the streaming server encoders.

Lately, and very evident late last week (see Station News item: NETWORK NOT-WORK ISSUES), there have been some issues with packet loss on certain routing paths to the Aural Moon streaming server. I, myself, could not listen to Aural Moon even with my iTunes configured to use the maximum buffer size available. You may also have noticed an extreme number of SQL errors in the "Now Playing" window and the "Latest Music Library Update" window. These two sections of the Aural Moon web page contain data that exists ONLY on the streaming server. When you access the web page, code behind the scenes must send an SQL query to the Aural Moon streaming server to gather the information displayed in each of these two regions of the web page.

Because the Aural Moon web server must communicate with the Aural Moon streaming server for current music library information, any interruptions of service between these two machines will cause discernible problems within your browser displaying the page. I reported this to Streamguys and they claim that they have made some changes to routing; however, while it is better, it is not perfect. It's very likely that these problems have been in the system/network for some time and have only been exacerbated to severe status in recent days/weeks.

It may be that the streaming server just cannot handle the load of the many more patrons now listening to the patron streams. We may need to have the patron streams replicated by Streamguys as well. We're asking a lot of the current Aural Moon streaming server -- SAM is selecting, playing, and encoding several different stream formats and bit rates; the server is actively "screen scraping" for VNC access; MySQL is running as the database engine; IceCast is running for AAC+ streaming; and several (4 IIRC) instances of Shoutcast are running to handling MP3 streaming.

[gr8sho92]

While I've seen the SQL error issues, I have not observed any issues with the stream in Florida. I listen regularly on my iPhone over AT&T's 3G network with no issues other than what AT&T inflicts with poor coverage in certain spots.

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by gr8sho92

While I've seen the SQL error issues, I have not observed any issues with the stream in Florida. I listen regularly on my iPhone over AT&T's 3G network with no issues other than what AT&T inflicts with poor coverage in certain spots.

From Florida, your packet take a completely different path to the streaming server than my SQL queries from the web site. I'd really be curious to see that path if you can do a 'traceroute' to the streaming server and forward it to me.

[NorCalKurt]

My stream is fine here.

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by NorCalKurt

My stream is fine here.

My stream has been fine here too since Streamguys made the routing changes. However, other tools still detect that it is not quite the ideal channel, so you will, from time to time, see SQL errors pop up -- more so in the "Now Playing" window than in the "Latest Music LIbrary Update".

[deSousa]

Thanks for the info Vax.

Today the 128k stream has been working non-stop for over an hour. It hadn't been like this for some time.

Meanwhile I'll try to teak Rythmbox' buffer to a larger size as Dale suggested.

Thanks to all for the replies.