Broadcasting and "OpenDNS" issues & questions?
 

I run a small station. I've done a speed test and can support roughly 15 or so listeners. Since I rarely go above 5 to 6 listeners at a time I went conservative and set my max to 10.

So far no complaints from any of my listeners (most are friends of mine) I’m in Michigan and the friends/listeners are all over the place (i.e. Los Angeles/Tokyo/Chicago) I’ve listened to my station while on the go at Wi-Fi spots on my PSP and the station runs great with no buffering issues to speak of.

But recently over Easter I was visiting family in Chicago and when I was streaming the station on a family members computer it kept re-buffering like every other second. I logged into my admin page and nobody else was having under run issues. I listened to it on my psp at a local (Chicago) Starbucks and again it ran smooth with no buffering. So it was apparent to me this was just the one computer having a problem. So when we returned I did some tinkering. I activated “OpenDNS” on the suspect computer and turned off the windows firewall. And poof it streamed my station perfectly. It turns out the problem was the firewall.

Well to be safe I came home and did OpenDNS on my linksys router to ensure that the router was fully open and my station was indeed pumping out the best stream. Now a few days later my own computer upstairs is buffering the station like crazy. I have had no listeners for at least 2 days. I think because it’s buffering. This is new to me, since the station has ran flawlessly for over a month now. Are there any known issues with running a shoutcast server with openDNS? And what would cause a perfectly good station to suddenly get so chattery and buffer plagued out of nowhere?

I’m sort of a newbie, but I’m not totally technology inept. Is there a way to track the problem (maybe through the logfile?) or a technique I should be doing as preventive maintenance to keep my server running smooth? Like maybe restart the computer every once in a while…or do a disc clean up of some kind. Or something to that effect?

Any help would be great, thanks ahead of time.

well there are many different factors which can cause this. the most likely cause is bandwidth flooding. this can be caused by just about any application running on your network. things like windows updates, yahoo messenger, internet explorer, can all have a neg effect on your shoutcast stream. Its also possable (if on a cable internet connection) that someone else on your ISP's network is bandwidth hogging, or maybe , if your router is wireless ready someone may be tapping in (note WAP is not failsafe).
but then again it could be an application on the source stream computer hogging cpu or memory , perhaps a virus. theres just so many factors to concider. running a tracert might help. hope this helps :)