SLMC

RayW · Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Posts: 564 Location: Twin Cities, MN

One thing about Comcast, which I have, too ...

I complained for three or four weeks before the tech finally came out. He said that they turned on a monitor to my line and found significant connectivitiy problems (they had a name for it) off and on during the day. That's what prompted them to send the tech ... didn't cost me a cent (over the normal high cost of cable, that is). But, he also commented that I could spend some bucks and replace the cabling in the house. (ain't gonna happen soon LMTY).
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Distilled1 · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 392 Location: Chicago

Silas I would put my 29.95 usd a month 11,000Kbs DSL line up against any cable connection, unless only (1) person is on it, why? because cable unlike DSL is a shared service, in my neighborhood on cable (had it 2 days) I was running 758Kbs down load and 120Kbs up because every other 40 homes on the street were running it and watching you tube Wink

my DSL is mine my line it test out at 11,000Kbs downstream + and 7500Kbs up I can serve about 10 people right from my lan on a 128k shoutcast without buffering ! I will never go back to cable. have fiber Optics at work in a construction trailer, it is very poor quality but I put that on the crap computers they give us.

OK Vincent, a solution although maybe not feasible would be to run a hard wire to the room your in from the hub, I did that for the wifes laptop about 30$ for the wire and some sweat. it picked up the performance drastically and as Silas said run 64 kbs set mono and set your SL to the lowest quality possible, point your camera at a wall so its not trying to download textures while you play and keep everyone else off the lan in the house while you play Wink

see if that works. if you ever need a place to try out setings feel free to ask I have 2 servers and an empty club lol Smile

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EDIT: to add Ray, yeah but its not just in the house its all the old lines coming in that were not designed for it connections and such, I had issues when I switched from my original dsl (never use earthlink) went cable went back to a direct DSL supplier called about low bandwidth came out the next day ran a new drop from the pole to the house...free and have been running that speed constantly! since Very Happy

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Tessira2 · Joined: 20 Sep 2007 Posts: 170

This professional geek is placing money on the wireless connection as first culprit. Wireless lines are notorious for wavering in bandwidth. Buy a long cable and run it on the floor first. If it works, than get creative with hiding the cable line. Very Happy

Doubledown Tandino · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:24 am Post subject:

I am a stream server provider with over 70 happy renters from just SL users. I have 3 different servers to combat any and all issues with anyone.
There are so many reasons as to why there would be quality issues, skips, etc.

I would be able to deduce what the problem is just by hearing the stream.

The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it's not the cable net.

If you want to let me have a listen to the stream, just IM me inworld, and I'll be able to tell whats causing the problems and what to do to fix it.
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RayW · Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Posts: 564 Location: Twin Cities, MN

I agree with both of you ... try a wire.

I have to admit, I run SL on an ethernet wire (25' long) to get the best possible speed out of my cable. I run my Simplecast PC (with my connection to the streaming host) on wireless because I don't need the speed there. But, sharing both on a wireless connection could be asking too much of it.
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Doubledown Tandino · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:27 am Post subject:

Vincent Merricks · Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Posts: 15

Thanks everyone for your input on this. I'd like to get a full show in without any skipping sometime. I know it happens once in a while regardless, but If I make it good on my end, then I can blame SL like everyone else. Very Happy

Doubledown, if I catch you in-world, maybe we can work on this. Luke, I've used the free stream kiosk next to Vibe a few times. Thanks for having it there. I'll have to drop you a little "Linden Love" sometime for the times I've used it. The first thing I think I'll try is to use a separate PC for the stream and see if that helps. It's wireless too, but I'd like to know for sure if it's a a wireless issue or something else. Also, I'd need somewhere around 40' of cable to wire it and I seem to remember that the signal degrades with distance. I think there is a wire made for longer runs, but I'd have to check on it. I'll let you know the results. Thanks again. Smile

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Doubledown Tandino · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 11:07 am Post subject:

It's absolutely definitely a wireless issue first off. It's impossible to do a flawless non-dropping show with wireless. No matter what, there's always going to be times where the signal disappears and that'll always cause the sound to drop. Even if you had your computer sitting directly ontop of the wireless modem..
So, as the live streamer, as the listener, and as a SLer, problems will occur when you're on wireless.
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Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1185 Location: Rhode Island

How many times have you heard people complaining about lag but how many times have you asked them why they're running on a nickel ninety five computer that can't kick itself out of its own way. A huge amount of lag is client-side and isn't an SL problem at all.

The same is true of stream skips. It takes a huge amount of compute power to run SL, not so much to run the stream, and a gigantic amount if you're using on-board effects for your audio. For example, you might be adding a touch of reverb, compression, or whatever to your signal before you send it out. Every bit of on-board signal processing that you're doing is increasing the chance of stream skips.

Example: I've got a Mac Pro quad processor (two dual-core CPU chips). Because my PC's motherboard died, I'm running everything on the Mac. Now I don't use external amplifiers or mixers and I'm undoubtedly doing vastly more on-board signal processing, amp simulation and whatnot than most people but the box has gobs of power and yet I will still get stream skips if I do not limit the bandwidth I let SL use while I'm playing.

It's very unlikely that it's SL doing it to you or all the streams would skip. It's not likely it's the stream provider as, so long as the server doesn't crash, it will probably work. What the server is doing is not some huge feat of technical wizardry. As Luke said previously, look for the simple solution and you've probably got the right one. It's an even-money bet that the problem comes from something you're doing and that's most likely overloading your box.

Does your computer have at least 2 GB of memory? If not, make it that way. It's cheap and it's easy.

If you have a dual-core process on your PC, ensure SL is assigned an affinity to only one. Sooner or later the Lindens may come to realize that multi-core processors are here to stay and will actually optimize SL to use them but it hasn't happened yet. (Disregard this for Mac computers as the problem only shows on PCs)

There appears to be a difference in bandwidth consumption for Macs and PCs. My typical configuration is to run a PC to support SL and a Mac to support audio and this has been reliable with a 64K quality setting for the stream over Nicecast. However, while the PC has been down I have tried using an older Mac to support SL while using the newer one for audio and I have seen a signifcant increase in stream skips. I've now abandoned the old Mac and run everything on the Mac Pro, albeit with SL bandwidth cut down to about 200K.

Consider also the music protocol you are using as Icecast 2 is said to be less CPU-intensive than Shoutcast. I've not run any benchmarks to verify it but you may want to perform some of your own to get to the bottom of the problem.
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luketemplar · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 314 Location: United Kingdom

great post silas. I think this thread needs to be summarised and turned into an FAQ - cos i think skipping is a very common problem especially when you are trying it for the first time.
Waiting to hear what solution works for Vincent first though Smile

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