What do I pay?

[Cashpot]

I have signed up for a max 64K service.

Question 1

If I stream at say 32K will I pay for just the 32K that I stream at or will my time be based on the MAXIMUM that I signed up for? I thought that 64K would be required but find that 32K is good enough. So it seems that I can save half my money. Will this affect my usage or charges?

Question 2
Does it matter if I stream in 32K stereo or 64K mono, does the server know the difference?

Question 3
Why is my station not showing up in the search? I admt that i have not yet streamed for long but for how long must I stream before I am recognised?

 

[HoddzDJ]

Hello there Cashpot, for me to give you an accurate answer, I'll need to have a few details on what you have signed up for.

Question 1
Have you signed up for a monthly (unlimited plan) or a pay as you go plan? I am going to assume that you have an unlimited monthly plan, because you have got a 64kbps server. For that reason, I can tell you that you will always pay for 64 even if you stream at 32.

Question 2
Yes the server will know the difference, it will be set by the encoder that you use and the settings that you input.

Question 3
Not all stations will show up in the search, and I do believe it only shows stations that are streaming.


I hope that helps for you. If you need any other help then shout.

 

[Support]

Welcome to Internet Radio

Thanks Ben. Cashpot is on the Pay As You Go system.

Question 1) you will only pay for the bandwidth your listeners use. So if you signed up for 64 kbps and you are only streaming at 32 kbps then you will only pay the usage on 32 kbps.

Question 2) You will use slightly less bandwidth if you stream in 32 kbps mono rather than 32 kbps stereo.

Question 3) There is up to a 15 minute delay before you are listed. Also make sure you configure your genres correctly in your encoder to ones that match in our directory. This will give you better exposure for your station.

 

[Cashpot]

Thanks for your replies I think that as my sources are all mono I will stream that way. I have been playing around over the last 24 hours and must say the downlink stream is very "iffy" in that it is forever dropping out.

I have a 10Meg speed connection and do a lot of audio work with several internet radios to monitor yet your stream is the worst of any that I use.

My son is station manager for a large "proper" station who streams from their own server (using the same shoutcast linux version as you by the way) and their feed never ever drops out.

With my connection all my radios that I have tried are constantly rebuffering. It seems to happen whenever another listener connects or disconnects but also every two minutes or so. My uplink is continuous so I must wonder if your server is getting overloaded at times - this was Saturday afternoon when I expect many people will be listening to various internet stations.

I shall continue to play around this week as if others are satisfied then it must be somthing that I am doing wrong (what I can't imagine;-) but if I am to run the thing properly I must have a continuous stream for listeners.

By the by when the rebuffering occurs the programme continues at precicely the same point as where it left off so eventually there must be a very long delay established!

 

[Support]

Hi Cashpot

We of course understand your expectations of a continuous and solid stream and we constantly strive to achieve this for all our clients. It is very strange that you are getting such problems. Our servers are definitely not overloaded as we are very particular about this. We distribute our clients over many servers to avoid such overloading.

We also monitory the network latency of all our servers and receive notifications of any sort of packet loss or downtime. There has been no such issues on Saturday, we couldn't find any packet loss whatsoever in fact. Further to this the other users on your machine are performing flawlessly.

We have setup some monitoring against your IP which we will run to see if we can identify any issues. We do also have the possibility of moving your server to a different data centre if that is the issue. We will let you know the outcome of the monitoring.

 

[Cashpot]

Thank you I must say it has not dropped out for me this afternoon - but I have been working in another area so the stream has not been up for a continuous period.

I will leave it up for a few hours to test.

Perhaps yesterday was a one off.

Time will tell!

 

[Support]

Hi Cashpot. How is the radio performing now ? If you still have some issues we can move you to a different data centre. Let us know if you need this and we can organise it.

 

[Cashpot]

I have been testing further and think the drop outs may have been caused by my streaming the content fom a data server and would assume that some sort of bottle kneck there must have "glitched" the feed in some way.

Anyway I have put a small amount of content direct onto the uplink computer and have experenced a much better (although not perfect) service.

I therfore conclude that the problem is for now solved. I will be puttng on some more credit, setting up a web site and getting going later in the month.

Than you for your help.

 

[HoddzDJ]

More credit already? And you're streaming at 32 mono, bloody hell... you have done so magical stuff there my friend!! You must be maxing out your server with listeners to burn that much, no wonder why it drops out every now and again.

 

[Support]

Hi Cashpot. We are glad you seem to be getting on better. You have used very little of your credit so there is no need for you to 'top up' yet. You will receive an email from us when your balance is getting low. Best of luck with your radio.