"Slow Listeners" - 405 in 4 days

[Good User]

I have noticed that in the mornings at 6 am to 10 am a lot of Slow Listeners happen on the RadioBOSS Cloud server, so far there are 405 in only 4 days of use. I am concerned about this, I left another streaming host Icecast server provider because they had too much traffic on their server, causing many slow listeners, in 7 days over 1200. Please explain about this happening on your server?

Thank you very much.

 

[Good User]

slow_listeners 879 ? In only 7 days.

 

[Viafiber.se]

What is this about and how does it affect you? Please explain, berceuse I have no clue what you are trying to say and why, and I do like to ynderstand.

 

[Good User]

It is the number of listeners that experienced "Buffering" during listening to the stream from a RadioBOSS Icecast server.

I thought I would post it here to see if other users are experiencing the same situation.

 

[Viafiber.se]

Okay, now I understand what you meant.
I'm, a customer like you, using RadioBOSS software, and nothing else but the software, but I believe the likelihood of RadioBOSS Icecast server service using a poor connection is very, very, very small. I guess, without knowing, that buffering probably has more to do with the listener's connection than RadioBOSS.

Then there's probably the case of "you get what you pay for," 100 or more megabits at home is not the same as 100 or more megabits redundant dedicated for a company. There are reasons why one connection costs €25 and the other £2500.

I think you'll get an answer soon from the "boss"

 

[djsoft]

a lot of Slow Listeners happen on the RadioBOSS Cloud server

What do you mean by "slow"? How those listeners are different from any other listeners?

It is the number of listeners that experienced "Buffering" during listening

How did you know those listeners experience this problem?

 

[Good User]

I received some emails from some North America and also European listeners that had experienced some interruptions in their listening.

Based on what I know about Icecast servers where it says on the Admin page of my Icecast server where it shows the number of "slow_listeners" this is the number of listeners that had their stream interrupted while listening. This is also called "buffering" in the Internet streaming industry.

I know that some buffering can be caused by the listeners having a poor Internet connection, but I believe that due to the sheer number of slow_listeners (many hundreds) reported by the Icecast server, this can be caused by a data center having too much traffic on a certain Internet carrier. I don't know what Internet carrier is used for my Icecast server, but if it is Cogent Communications they are known to be a lower-rated carrier for their quality for streaming. This is based on what I have read about Cogent based on the experience of others that have Internet radio stations.

 

[djsoft]

I believe that due to the sheer number of slow_listeners (many hundreds) reported by the Icecast server

It depends on what actually Icecast counts. It can be one listener who repeatedly connects. It can be some robot even.

Cogent Communications they are known to be a lower-rated carrier for their quality for streaming. This is based on what I have read about Cogent based on the experience of others that have Internet radio stations.

In the past there were even "Cogent-free" hosting providers. I don't know what providers are used for the server where your account is hosted, this information doesn't seem to be easily available. And I don't think it matters nowadays.

Audio stream is extremely low bandwidth, 192 kbps or 128 kbps, this is nothing - e.g. 192kbps is only 24 kilobytes per second. Unless the connection is really poor. I don't think datacenter's connection can be that overloaded to not be able to send those 24KB every second. Also there's buffer: upon connection, server sends more data to the listeners so they can compensate for any network errors. The buffer size is configured in Settings / Advanced in RadioBOSS Cloud.

We occasionally test our servers, specifically connecting from far away locations (connecting to the server from different continent) and "listening" to the stream, and no problems were ever found.

 

[Good User]

To be more certain, I have added a Poll to my website so that listeners can vote if they are having trouble receiving the stream. I will let the poll run for 1 week.

 

[Viafiber.se]

To be more certain, I have added a Poll to my website so that listeners can vote if they are having trouble receiving the stream. I will let the poll run for 1 week.

Url to you stream?

 

[Good User]

http://c23.radioboss.fm:8148/autodj

https://c23.radioboss.fm/stream/148

 

[djsoft]

http://c23.radioboss.fm:8148/autodj

This link should not be used, instead of /autodj you should use the mount point as defined in settings (/stream by default): http://c23.radioboss.fm:8148/stream