Stream cutting in and out.

[dopelabs]

Originally Posted by sqgl

Someone suggested you use MTR to diagnose your connection and then did it for you. I was just noting that it is hardly worth bothering with because it is deceptive. The French node is not necessarily a bad link in the chain for your stream because there may not be any bad link in your chain (although if there is a bad one then the French one is it).

while it may not give you a definitive answer as to what the issue is, MTR is very much worth running. to start it will show you the general health of the network path your taking. while you may label it as deceptive, if you understand how it works, and how networks work, it is an extremely useful tool as a first step in troubleshooting.

while a lossy node may not represent a problematic node, combined with high latency and/or high deviation chances are thats the culprit... its also very easy to spot if/when your route goes overseas by the obvious jump in latency for said hop and all hops after.

generally the fewer hops the better.... more hops dont always = a worse route, but each additional hop you traverse the greater the chance something can break.

a good example is cogent. cogent is considered 'value' bandwidth which many datacenters and service providers use because of low cost. while 'premium' bandwidth providers such as HE, level3 ,etc cost more, you will generally have a shorter route with less oversubscription.

from philly to san jose over cogent

phl01.atlas.cogentco.com philly pa
jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com NY
cle04.atlas.cogentco.com clevland ohio
ord01.atlas.cogentco.com chicago il
mci01.atlas.cogentco.com kansas city mo
den01.atlas.cogentco.com denver co
slc01.atlas.cogentco.com salt lake city utah
sfo01.atlas.cogentco.com san francisco ca
sjc01.atlas.cogentco.com san jose ca


from philly to san jose over HE

nyc4.he.net
sjc2.he.net

[Kemo]

Okay. I just stumbled onto this thread http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=451412
and was wondering if upgrading like they say would fix the current problem I'm having with the stream cutting out?

[Kemo]

I did a 37 hour broadcast for Halloween and it went off without a problem. Not sure if SC has fixed anything, or it's because of lower traffic. I'm going to try to run a short show this weekend and see what happens.

[Sariah]

Originally Posted by Kemo

I got about an 1 hour and a half into the broadcast replay tonight before the cutting out got really bad. I also noticed that when it did happen, the song titles on my player were completely wrong..whereas they worked perfectly fine for that first hour and a half.

This is a crazy situation.

Did you ever figure out what was causing the incorrect song titles. I am having this issue now. The audio is correct but every so often it pushes our old metadata/song title info.

Ty

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by Sariah

Did you ever figure out what was causing the incorrect song titles. I am having this issue now. The audio is correct but every so often it pushes our old metadata/song title info.

Ty

No. I never figured that one out. Every so often, they get stuck during my broadcast, but they end up fixing themselves after a few songs.

I'm just battling the cutting out of audio still. I guess I'm going to have to switch my show to a different day. Seems like Saturday has the most traffic.

[DJ Egg]

This problem has now been fixed.

SHOUTcast Streaming Service (SCSS) stations above 128kbps should now all be running smoothly without any buffering/choppy playback issues.

Apologies for all the inconvenience caused.

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by DJ Egg

This problem has now been fixed.

SHOUTcast Streaming Service (SCSS) stations above 128kbps should now all be running smoothly without any buffering/choppy playback issues.

Apologies for all the inconvenience caused.

Thank you.

[#HOODXRadio]

I am using MyRadioStream to stream my shoutcast and MyRadioStream is telling me that Shoutcast is down for maintenance and it has been this way since last night. I am seeing that some people are back up and running but I am not getting anything at all and MyRadioStream is telling me that my network is "private". Anybody else experiencing this?

[Kemo]

I've been broadcasting for almost 2 hours now and have had no problems.

[seanbforhockey]

Did you check your quality of the audio?

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by seanbforhockey

Did you check your quality of the audio?

The quality was good. Some of my listeners said that it somehow sounds better now, than it did before the problems started. Not sure about that, but if they're happy with it, then it's all good for me.

[Kemo]

AND.....we're back to the audio cutting in and out.

[dopelabs]

i would suspect due to the random nature of this happening that its most likely network congestion, packet loss, could be a saturated link, switch could get into a bad state for any number of reasons, there could be a shitty cable somewhere and it only happens if it gets windy wherever that cable may hang.

you should run an mtr from you to your server and see if you can spot a problem hop.

[Soulmaster]

and the cuttings starts again... #horror

[dopelabs]

i suggest pinging dj egg or contact using the standard methods of support. from the last time this happened , he may have some insight as to whats up and have a fix.

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by dopelabs

i suggest pinging dj egg or contact using the standard methods of support. from the last time this happened , he may have some insight as to whats up and have a fix.

I emailed them on Saturday night, and still haven't heard from them. All the problems we had a few months ago started the same way. First the metadata in the web player went out, long delay to broadcast, and then the cutting out audio.

My stream stopped cutting out about 20 minutes or so into my show. I haven't tested it again since Saturday night. I plan on broadcasting a little tonight to see if it happens again.

Since the last time we had the problem and it was fixed, it worked great. Everything went off without a hitch.

[Kemo]

I've had my stream up for almost 2 hours now and it just started cutting in and out about 15 minutes ago.

Seems like it started cutting around the same time it did a few months ago...between 8pm and 9pm CST.

[Soulmaster]

We decided to leave Shoutcast.. This weekend we start our own streamserver. no more cuttings...

it's realy not normal. every minute we got a cutting in the stream.

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by Soulmaster

We decided to leave Shoutcast.. This weekend we start our own streamserver. no more cuttings...

it's realy not normal. every minute we got a cutting in the stream.

Sounds like a good idea. I'm currently unable to do that at the moment, but it is something that I'm looking at in the future.

Meanwhile, my show has been going for a little over an hour tonight and the stream is holding up.

[Kemo]

Annnnd....we're back to the stream cutting in and out.

Does anyone know if there is some kind of listener limit? Seems like when I end up getting a lot of listeners it starts messing up.

I've had several weeks of no stream problems until tonight. Very frustrating. :/

[dopelabs]

its most likely a bandwidth capacity problem. all the symptoms are there..

its during north american/canadian internet 'rush hour' 8p-2a est

it seems to happen when your listener count gets high.

how many listener slots do they provide for your stream and how full is it when you start to experience problems?

im curious, do you have a shoutcast admin page where you can log in to your DNAS that hosted by radionomy?

there most definitely is a listener limit, but seeing as they have a shared hosting type of setup as ive only been able to find 2 different hosts they use for their customers, this limit can vary for any and all stations running on the same host.

its called over subscribing, and just about every hosting company and ISP does it.

the idea is they take on more customers than they can support having resources for because generally, not every customer will be utilizing all of the resources in their quota.

if everyone on comcast maxed out their downstrem internet with downloads all at the same time, it would probably break in spectacular fashion.

this is why the internet slows down during peak usage. if everyone truely had dedicated bandwidth, this really wouldnt happen.

so theres a good chance that when your station is experiencing high listener counts, so are other stations hosted on the same server, thus using more bandwidth..

the NIC on the server thats providing the hosting can only support so much...

standard NICs come in 1G, 10G, 40G, and 100G.

they are also limited by the amount of upstream bandwidth they have from their ISP.


both of these are the same host

master.shoutcast.com
master1.shoutcast.com

with open ports on

8000/tcp open
8001/tcp open
8080/tcp open

this one lives at a different IP but could also be on the same host

master2.shoutcast.com

with open ports on

8000/tcp open
8001/tcp open

the only thing ive been able to find at the above hosts are icecast servers.. thats right.. icecast. let that sink in for a moment...

[djSpinnerCee]

the only thing ive been able to find at the above hosts are icecast servers.. thats right.. icecast. let that sink in for a moment...

@dopelabs --- a smoking gun, indeed

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by dopelabs

its most likely a bandwidth capacity problem. all the symptoms are there..

its during north american/canadian internet 'rush hour' 8p-2a est

it seems to happen when your listener count gets high.

how many listener slots do they provide for your stream and how full is it when you start to experience problems?

im curious, do you have a shoutcast admin page where you can log in to your DNAS that hosted by radionomy?

Yeah. I kind of figured that was happening. It sux because when I was having the problems last year, they got "fixed" and I didn't have the cutting out problem for months, and then it starting cutting out again after the metadata stopped working in the web players. (Guess dude is still on vacation).

None of my Admin stats work anymore. They haven't in a long time. So, I'm not able to see what I have going on.

I really want to switch to a better service, but I'm not familiar with any other server software. I use the old school Winamp & Shoutcast DSP because it's the easiest. But I understand that my radio show is suffering from it. And I also don't have the extra funds to use a pay service. As my listener count is slowly rising, I think I'm going to have to figure something out since SC isn't doing anything to fix their problems. And it's a shame, because SC could be an amazing little service, but only when that service works properly.

If I do switch services, I need to find one that is idiot proof like Winamp/SC DSP. The command line driven ones are a headache.

Thank you for taking the time to help, Dopelabs. I really appreciate your input.

[dopelabs]

Originally Posted by Kemo

they got "fixed" and I didn't have the cutting out problem for months..

maybe the server its on got hung in a weird state... or there was some runaway process eating up ram or disk space or whatever... maybe its something weird like logfiles getting too big. that usually takes a while to get to a critical point...

Originally Posted by Kemo

I really want to switch to a better service.

send me a direct msg with your avg listener count and listen url...

i provide hosting for a number of stations.. i may be able to help

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by dopelabs

send me a direct msg with your avg listener count and listen url...

i provide hosting for a number of stations.. i may be able to help

My listener count has dropped since all the problems began in the fall. I was off the air for several months because of the cutting out problem. When it started cutting out again in the spring, but numbers dropped again. I advertise on social media, mainly FB...but if there is a listener limit that ShoutCast does do, the more I advertise for listeners, it becomes a moot point once the cutting out starts because of the listener count going up.

Not sure what my average listener count is anymore. I have people listening and talking in comments on Facebook, but the RMO shows different numbers. I don't think any of the ShoutCast/Radionomy stuff properly works anymore.

[dopelabs]

well when you view your shoutcast admin page, or view 7.html, what does it say the max number of listeners are?

[Kemo]

Originally Posted by dopelabs

well when you view your shoutcast admin page, or view 7.html, what does it say the max number of listeners are?

When I go to the stats page on the ShoutCast RMO page, the stats are all blank.

I tried to go back and check past stats and nothing comes up.

[dopelabs]

what is your listen url?

[JacquesMoreau29]

Aug 13 2018 - I have the sound "cutting in and out" since I created my station in July.
I tried everything.. like any posts below.

y station: http://listen.shoutcast.com/austinbluesradio

Also, I noticed that the "fallback" file is cutting in & out also. That exactly prove... the problem is NOT with the broadcasting of our stations but on Shoutcast server by itself.

THE SHOUTCAST SERVER NEEDS MAINTENANCE.

I tried to contact DJ EGG few times... no reply... no fix... still cutting in & out at 128 kbps.

Please, we need more people to complain to shoutcast... and force them to do a maintenance on their side.

[JacquesMoreau29]

Any suggestion for an economic Shoutcast alternatives?

I'm NOT ready (for now) to start my own DNAS.

I saw on the web: Castnet https://www.casthost.net/cart.php?gid=22

Any good suggestions?

[dopelabs]

at this point i am willing to provide hosting for any small to medium sized stations. i have support for basically anything you want... shoutcast, icecast, video streaming, multicasting, auto dj, server side recording, automatic podcast, and whatever else you can come up with. send me a msg and we can discuss.

[Junglejim]

Originally Posted by Kemo

Everything has been fine until last weekend and tonight. While streaming from my laptop, the songs playing are cutting in and out. I've been broadcasting since Jan. and never had a problem with it until now.

I'm in the middle of a show at the moment, and it's cutting in and out. I'm running Winamp with ShoutCast Source DSP v.2.3.5 [Build 222] on a Windows 10 Laptop.
Like I said, I haven't had any problems for the past several months until recently.

Any ideas on what I can do to fix this?

I'd like to know too

[sqgl]

Bad internet connection can be the cause. My Cable modem connection was faulty (telecom work in my area) and so my 4G backup (built into the modem) took over but because of a weak signal I could not connect to my (remote) shoutcast server for more than four seconds. Luckily I had another USB 4G modem and that worked fine.

[NJK]

start a ping to a website and see what that provides as data.

if the connection is faulty it should be visible in the data.

[sqgl]

Ping won't necessarily reveal a problem. I had a long ping from me in Australia to my server in Europe (300ms) regardless if whether I used the faulty 4G or the good 4G connection.

What I just said doesn't make sense to me but that is what I observed. Using the free tool WinMTR didn't help much because the the only packets lost were "100%" lost to "no response from host" (ie no info on those packets and they might be 100% OK).