| Author |
Message |
Harry
Guest
|
 Posted:
Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:08 am Post subject:
Broadcast publishing point stops |
|
|
Broadcast publishing points stop and do not restart if the
stream is interrupted.
The problems have been random, but here is a precise
scenario:
Radio station k123 has a WM 7.1 encoder and broadcasts to
our W2003 server running WM9 Services. The publishing
point is set to pull, and the plug-in "start publishing
point when a client connects" is disabled. The encoder
computer crashes. The publising point stops. The encoder
computer reboots and starts encoding again, and looks
normal through pcAnywhere. Clicking on a link to listen to
that stream gives an error message "Windows Media Player
cannot play the file because the server is busy. Try again
later."
However, this is a powerful but lightly loaded server. It
has gigabit connections and typically never runs more than
1-2% cpu occupancy. At the moment this particular event
occurred it was only at 1% with only 15 unicast clients
connected.
Then I changed the plug-in to ENABLE "start publishing
point when a client connects". Now try to connect with a
player and the player is able to receive the stream and
the publishing point status turns to "on".
We've had other such events that caused similar problems.
Yesterday a tech in the datacenter overloaded the circuits
on the rack and popped a circuit breaker causing several
of our servers to go down. We experienced the same kind of
problem on a couple of streams. We have just upgraded to
W2003/WM9, but previously had similar problems on a
cluster of six W2000/WM7 servers wherein a stream had hung
on four of the servers in the cluster, but was still
working on two of the servers.
We seem to have had the same type of failures whether or
not the plug-in is enabled.
Our customers stream live 24x7, and this kind of
unreliability is intolerable. btw, I noticed that someone
else asked the same kind of question about 3 months ago,
with no answer
thx
Harry Emerson
hemerson at surfernetwork.com
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Ravi Raman
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:29 am Post subject:
Broadcast publishing point stops |
|
|
Hi Harry,
Are you doing Unicast or Multicast?
For unicast, if the encoder crashed and got restarted
again, sometimes it is possible that the server thinks the
encoder is down for good (after a timeout) and might stop
the Publishing point itself. Once the publishing point is
stopped, it has to be restarted somehow so that the
clients can stream from it.
In these cases, once the encoder comes up, if you can
manually "Start" the broadcast publishing point on the
server(right click on the publishing point and select
Start) - it should work correctly.
The alternative is to set the "start publishing point when
a client connects" option on the server. In this case, you
typically don't even have to start the publishing point
yourself. Once the client connects to the publishing
point, the server automatically starts the publishing
point (and upon starting the publishing point, it will
establish connection with encoder). However, the latter
also means that if no client clients for a while - the
publishing point will stop itself automatically after a
while and will restart when a client connects again(it
saves bandwidth that way between server and encoder when
no client is connected).
Is there a reason why the latter option won't work for
you?
Thx,
Ravi
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.
| Quote: | -----Original Message-----
Broadcast publishing points stop and do not restart if
the
stream is interrupted.
The problems have been random, but here is a precise
scenario:
Radio station k123 has a WM 7.1 encoder and broadcasts to
our W2003 server running WM9 Services. The publishing
point is set to pull, and the plug-in "start publishing
point when a client connects" is disabled. The encoder
computer crashes. The publising point stops. The encoder
computer reboots and starts encoding again, and looks
normal through pcAnywhere. Clicking on a link to listen
to
that stream gives an error message "Windows Media Player
cannot play the file because the server is busy. Try
again
later."
However, this is a powerful but lightly loaded server. It
has gigabit connections and typically never runs more
than
1-2% cpu occupancy. At the moment this particular event
occurred it was only at 1% with only 15 unicast clients
connected.
Then I changed the plug-in to ENABLE "start publishing
point when a client connects". Now try to connect with a
player and the player is able to receive the stream and
the publishing point status turns to "on".
We've had other such events that caused similar problems.
Yesterday a tech in the datacenter overloaded the
circuits
on the rack and popped a circuit breaker causing several
of our servers to go down. We experienced the same kind
of
problem on a couple of streams. We have just upgraded to
W2003/WM9, but previously had similar problems on a
cluster of six W2000/WM7 servers wherein a stream had
hung
on four of the servers in the cluster, but was still
working on two of the servers.
We seem to have had the same type of failures whether or
not the plug-in is enabled.
Our customers stream live 24x7, and this kind of
unreliability is intolerable. btw, I noticed that someone
else asked the same kind of question about 3 months ago,
with no answer
thx
Harry Emerson
hemerson at surfernetwork.com
.
|
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|
| Back to top |
|
|
tommy
Guest
|
| Posted:
Fri Jul 02, 2004 1:20 pm Post subject:
RE: Broadcast publishing point stops |
|
|
Hi Ravi,
We have experienced the same problem described by Harry. Often even if the encoder machine does not stop the server loses contact with the encoder (we use a pull) and the live broadcast stops (the publishing point is still running though). I have to stop the publishing point and restart and then the broadcast resumes. This seems to be a bug (a serious one I might add).
Sincerely,
Tom Barish
"Ravi Raman" wrote:
| Quote: | Hi Harry,
Are you doing Unicast or Multicast?
For unicast, if the encoder crashed and got restarted
again, sometimes it is possible that the server thinks the
encoder is down for good (after a timeout) and might stop
the Publishing point itself. Once the publishing point is
stopped, it has to be restarted somehow so that the
clients can stream from it.
In these cases, once the encoder comes up, if you can
manually "Start" the broadcast publishing point on the
server(right click on the publishing point and select
Start) - it should work correctly.
The alternative is to set the "start publishing point when
a client connects" option on the server. In this case, you
typically don't even have to start the publishing point
yourself. Once the client connects to the publishing
point, the server automatically starts the publishing
point (and upon starting the publishing point, it will
establish connection with encoder). However, the latter
also means that if no client clients for a while - the
publishing point will stop itself automatically after a
while and will restart when a client connects again(it
saves bandwidth that way between server and encoder when
no client is connected).
Is there a reason why the latter option won't work for
you?
Thx,
Ravi
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.
-----Original Message-----
Broadcast publishing points stop and do not restart if
the
stream is interrupted.
The problems have been random, but here is a precise
scenario:
Radio station k123 has a WM 7.1 encoder and broadcasts to
our W2003 server running WM9 Services. The publishing
point is set to pull, and the plug-in "start publishing
point when a client connects" is disabled. The encoder
computer crashes. The publising point stops. The encoder
computer reboots and starts encoding again, and looks
normal through pcAnywhere. Clicking on a link to listen
to
that stream gives an error message "Windows Media Player
cannot play the file because the server is busy. Try
again
later."
However, this is a powerful but lightly loaded server. It
has gigabit connections and typically never runs more
than
1-2% cpu occupancy. At the moment this particular event
occurred it was only at 1% with only 15 unicast clients
connected.
Then I changed the plug-in to ENABLE "start publishing
point when a client connects". Now try to connect with a
player and the player is able to receive the stream and
the publishing point status turns to "on".
We've had other such events that caused similar problems.
Yesterday a tech in the datacenter overloaded the
circuits
on the rack and popped a circuit breaker causing several
of our servers to go down. We experienced the same kind
of
problem on a couple of streams. We have just upgraded to
W2003/WM9, but previously had similar problems on a
cluster of six W2000/WM7 servers wherein a stream had
hung
on four of the servers in the cluster, but was still
working on two of the servers.
We seem to have had the same type of failures whether or
not the plug-in is enabled.
Our customers stream live 24x7, and this kind of
unreliability is intolerable. btw, I noticed that someone
else asked the same kind of question about 3 months ago,
with no answer
thx
Harry Emerson
hemerson at surfernetwork.com
.
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