Wowza Community

Delivering Shoutcast via HLS to iOS disconnects as well as Flowplayer disconnects

Hi Guys

I’ve been having this issue for a while where serving a re-streamed Shoutcast stream to iOS devices, the stream disconnects. Most notably around the minute mark. I have followed the Shoutcast tutorial to the letter and I keep getting this issue. Any ideas?

Second issue is with Flowplayer. We have listeners connecting and after random periods the stream will disconnect and they would need to refresh the page to re-connect the stream. We deliver the stream via RTMP on Flowplayer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

What you describe suggests an issue with bandwidth for your server. As you are seeing issues with both types of streaming RTMP/iOS then it would suggest it is not a playback issue. It could possibly be the connection to the Shoutcast source however I would first run speed tests against your server to check it has consistent speed and latency.

Andrew.

Hi Andrew

Thanks for the prompt response. It really is very encouraging :slight_smile:

I would agree with your assessment and those were my initial thoughts as well. We’ve had this issue since Wowza 1.7.0 though and with every upgrade the issue initially abates but inevitably returns. The server sits with Streamguys in the US where we have copious amounts of bandwidth available and are currently only using a small percentage of the available bandwidth. We are however relaying from another ISP in South Africa, where we are based.

The similarity between iOS and RTMP is the fact that it disconnects. Colouring it a little more though, the iOS streams very consistently drop at around 1 minute of streaming. The RTMP streams drop intermittently though sometimes 40 seconds, sometimes 40 minutes and other times 36 hours. Identifying and troubleshooting it is a definite pain in the butt.

Maybe we should start with the iOS streams. Considering it is a repeatable issue. I would be happy to make a stream URL available for you to test with an iPhone or iPad if you like?

Tx

Cady

Hi,

You can make a link for the iOS stream and also the Shoutcast server, as it may be the source. Shoutcast has a bufffer of about 400-500kbytes so it maybe the buffer is being exhausted and thus Wowza is disconnecting, but it could be something else.

Andrew.