Internet Radio dropouts, possible solution

Posted by: tigersclaw on 14 May 2015

Hi,

As a Uniti2 owner, I have been troubled by internet radio dropouts for several years. I have tried almost everything I found in this forum including switch ethernet to wifi, using upnp based radio instead of iradio itself, and using a better router/switch. All these measures have worked somehow, yet generally speaking I am still not satisfied with my internet radio perfomance. 320k stations have so many dropouts that I can only give them up. 256k and 128k stations usually have little dropouts in the morning, yet in the afternoon whether they are listenalbe depends on luck. BTW, I live in Shanghai, China, and my ISP is China Telecomm.

A few months ago, a local buddy told me that a small router including VPN function sold online would significantly improve iradio performance. I tried and then the 320k stations became listenable in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon.

Last week I noticed an add-on service by China Telecomm named Internet Elite. The web page said that this service will use a new internet connection which will increase my international band width. My internet connection is 100mbps, yet this band width is just applicable domesticly. I have been guessing that the poor iradio perfomance was due to my poor international link speed. And now I have a chance to give it a test.

The result is positive. With this Internet Elite and also with the vpn router, I now can listen to any iradio station any time in a day without a single dropout. The only problem is that Internet Elite almost doubles my internet cost, which is now about $600 per year.

So, buddies of the forum, perhaps you can consider your international band width while trying to improve your iradio performance. The data your ISP provides you may only be domestic. Try to ping vtuner.com and see the delay. For me it was 4xx ms before and 1xx ms now.

Also, I will try to find if the vpn router is necessary for the new performance. If not, I will stop using it and restore my previous one. Will keep you updated in this topic.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by ChrisSU

My miserly 4mb internet connection gives me reliable 320k iRadio, so I think I'll leave this sort of tinkering to someone else!

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by tigersclaw

So your ISP is honest about the true band width. 4mb is enough for 320k. Mine makes me double pay for a real band width.

Originally Posted by ChrisSU:

My miserly 4mb internet connection gives me reliable 320k iRadio, so I think I'll leave this sort of tinkering to someone else!

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Mike-B

I'm not really sure what you are trying to do with this.

I have 20mb/s internet speed, I don't have 320k dropouts & can listen with no probs & what seems to be unaffected while downloading a hi-res file. I pinged vTuner & got an x10 ping average of 37.127ms

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by tigersclaw

So congratulations on your quick connection. What I did was to pay my ISP for some real international band width and I guess this might work for some who are having dropouts. I think there are ISPs who claimed to offer you some high speed while the real speed, especailly international one, is much slower than claimed.

Originally Posted by Mike-B:

I'm not really sure what you are trying to do with this.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Aleg

I think it is a valuable pointer that tigerclaw gives here.

Those people that do experience drop outs (it is obviously not meant for people who do not experience dropouts), just do a ping to vtuner.com and see if the respons times are (too) long.

It is easily done, and if they are long it might pay dividend to call your ISP to see what they can do.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Mike-B

Whoops - my bad - I read tigerclaw's first post wrong (sorry)

I read it as - was 4xx ms before and 1xx ms now - it did not sink into the mush between my ears as something in the 400's to something in the 100's (ms)

So thanks tigerclaw, a worthwhile tip

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by tigersclaw

It's OK Mike. You must know how much I envy your quick connection

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Tom Mitchell

How do I go about doing a ping to Vtuner?

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by tigersclaw

If you are using a PC based on Windows7, press the start button and you will see a search bar below. Key in cmd and press the enter key, a black window will popup and you can key in ping vtuner.com there.

Originally Posted by Tom Mitchell:

How do I go about doing a ping to Vtuner?

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Mike-B

Originally Posted by Tom Mitchell:

How do I go about doing a ping to Vtuner?

Search Ping vTuner & you will get a few ready made tools. I searched both ping & routing for both vTuner.com & vTuner.co.uk - same reasult as both ended up at vTuner USA

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Guys, it's worth remembering vTuner is the 'directory' fir web radio services. The actual media for the streaming service comes directly from web radio stream provider. Therefore looking at the round trip time using a ping to vTuner is not really going to help you other than showing you have connectivity to the.VTuner directory.

As I have said before dropouts are not neccessarily down to Internet connection bandwidth. A lhigh speed internet connection could still cause dropouts. This can be caused by the TCP window being exhausted in the Naim due to latency and delays across the Internet.

Finally pings can only give an approx indication of round trip delay, and is not neccessarily the same as for TCP.

Pings use ICMP packets where as web radio media uses TCP packets, and these packets can be queued and treated differently when routing across the Internet.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by tigersclaw

Yeah I totally agree with you Simon. In my case what I did was just to ask my ISP to provide me a better international connection. The change in ping delay is just part of the result. The more important result I guess is that I have a quicker connection while conneted to stations abroard. Here in China you can easily get 100mb domestic while the international speed is really, really poor. So I guess dudes who have same dropout problem might have the same situation as I do.

Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Finally pings can only give an approx indication of round trip delay, and is not neccessarily the same as for TCP.

Pings use ICMP packets where as web radio media uses TCP packets, and these packets can be queued and treated differently when routing across the Internet.

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Aleg

Well, I guess it is safe to say that when even ping is poor, TCP will hardly be better.

Posted on: 16 May 2015 by mudwolf

I get periods of dropouts also here in Los Angeles, don't know why, I drop it down to 128, and sometimes still does so other times, No problemo man!

I can never get the highest rating and Netgear has the latest rating.

Posted on: 16 May 2015 by engjoo

What firmware are you on ? I used to have internet radio problem but that has been fix with last years upgrade after extensive beta testing followed by an official release ver4.1.

Posted on: 18 May 2015 by tigersclaw

Mine is still 3.22. And I am planning to give it a try when next version is out.

Originally Posted by engjoo:

What firmware are you on ? I used to have internet radio problem but that has been fix with last years upgrade after extensive beta testing followed by an official release ver4.1.

Posted on: 18 May 2015 by tigersclaw

OK buddies, I have done a test on the internet radio performance with and without VPN. The conclutions is that it only works when there is VPN. I really don't understand why a direct link between the radio site and my uniti2 is worse than the link through some servers in Hongkong or Japan. Yet the Internet Elite is still necessary to give the VPN a fast connection.

Hope this does not confuse you.

Posted on: 22 May 2015 by Naim2

Guys, my vtuner ping is as below. Does it mean that i have slow connection? Because I have dropouts all the time.

Thanks. David

C:\Users\Lenovo G-480i3>ping vtuner.com

Pinging vtuner.com [74.86.58.246] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.86.58.246: bytes=32 time=467ms TTL=113
Reply from 74.86.58.246: bytes=32 time=827ms TTL=113
Reply from 74.86.58.246: bytes=32 time=275ms TTL=113
Reply from 74.86.58.246: bytes=32 time=274ms TTL=113

Ping statistics for 74.86.58.246:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 274ms, Maximum = 827ms, Average = 460ms

Posted on: 23 May 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Not not neccessarily. This in itself doesn't say whether it's the vTuner server that is delaying the response or not. Also vTuner is simply a directory site, and it will connect you to the relevant web station which will have a different address.

So if you want to use ping, ping a few local website, and then ping a few international... If both groups are showing similar times as to vTuner, then in it does point to a possible slow connection issue.

Slow connections should in themselves not be an issue with TCP for most application protocols other than increase latency, but do require more memory to use in operation.

The best tool to see if there are routing delays or hot spots across the Internet to your location is traceroute. Most OS have this utility at the command line.

Simon

Posted on: 23 May 2015 by Mike-B

I don't have drop outs & have a internet speed between 15 & 20mb/s ......... but if it helps as a comparison .........

Using Ping.eu (www)

--- PING vtuner.com (74.86.58.246) 56(84) bytes of data. ---
64 bytes from 74.86.58.246: icmp_seq=1 ttl=116 time=123 ms
64 bytes from 74.86.58.246: icmp_seq=2 ttl=116 time=123 ms
64 bytes from 74.86.58.246: icmp_seq=3 ttl=116 time=123 ms
64 bytes from 74.86.58.246: icmp_seq=4 ttl=116 time=124 ms

traceroute to vtuner.com (74.86.58.246), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets

This gave a long table of hops & the format is not suitable for this forum

- the longest hop duration is 125.178 ms

Posted on: 23 May 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Here is my trace route to vTuner. Remember vTuner itself is not responsible for the routes and the performance of the the web radio stations as they have their own addresses, it simply is a look up directory.

However this a reasonably healthy set of hops with no apparent congested or lengthy hops.. This may change at different times of the week.