Internet Radio on the blink

Jolly_Roger

:-[Can anybody offer any advice on a problem I am having connecting to the radio via my PC. This runs Windows XP Home Edition, while I have a Virgin Broadband connection. I formerly had few problems with Internet Radio connecting either via Real Player or Windows Media Player, however recently there has been a marked drop off in quality, while some stations no longer connect at all!
For example, I have recently listened to the cricket Test Match on BBC Radio using either format. However, although the signal initially starts off very strong, the signal is soon lost and after rebuffering restablishes itself but with a marked drop off in quality -you can still hear the commentary but the sound is more muffled.
This evening, I tried to connect to KGO radio in San Francisco, which I used to listen to 49er American Football Games. When I clicked on the "Listen Live" box, which worked perfectly last year, nothing happened. Normally, a pop up box appears and shows that a connection is being established, but nothing happened this time around.
What has gone wrong?

MisterT2

Do you find this better/worse at particular times of the day. Sounds like its negotiating connection based on available bandwidth - hence the drop in quality. I would check what's happening on your link using one of the testers such as http://www.dslreports.com/stest. (I would use the US DSL reports as the UK ones can give some very strange values and I don't trust them anymore).

I also had problems with bandwidth locally last year even though I was on a business service. Unfortunately there were several businesses and a couple of heavy duty downloaders on my local loop. Ping tests (ping -l 1472 -n 50 <isp ip address> showed several lost packets and several were > 300ms. Pretty dire. You should be able to get their IP address from their helpdesk. Run the ping command from a DOS box in Windows. (The ping command varies on UNIX/Linux). You might also want to try the -f option with -l 1472 to see whether the routers are passing your packets without fragmenting them. If they are being fragmented then you might need to get involved in a discussion about Service Level Agreements. Note that BT only use standard 32 byte packets which will only ever show major faults. The much larger packet size will show up a lot more network problems and expecially higher latencies caused by maxed out bandwidth.

The other issue that you could ask to be checked is the line quality. What will happen is your ISP will ask BT to check the line and amplifiers for noise, capacitance and so on. I had my line swapped with another pair of cables and it definitely improved things for me (though not enough). You might find problems, for example, after it has been raining. You might also want to check that they haven't daxed your line (split it across multiple customers).

You should also check/note your contention ratio. 50:1 is the norm for cheap broadband, 20:1 for business and 5:1 for Local Loop Unbundled (the line is unplugged from BT and plugged straight into your ISP). LLU cuts BT right out of the circuit and 100% responsibility then lies with your ISP. Obviously the expense increases at each step.

So, overall.
a) check line speed/latency using dsl report
b) check for packet loss and latency using the ping command
c) consider getting BT to check the line and ensure its not been daxed