NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: ISP's resetting RealPlayer?
Well, for once I may agree with Brett.
I listen to streaming radio at work, but my ISP is not Comcast. I never had
problems with booting until about 2 weeks ago. I accidentally left the player
on overnight when I went home. The next day when I got in I turned it off, then
back on again a few hours later. The rest of that day I was disconnected every
hour, but I manually restarted it regularly. I turned it off at 5, came back
the next day, and listened again with no further interruption.
Now, this could have been anything, but I chalked it up to the *station* getting
a clue and politely disconnecting me just in case I had wandered off - something
which, honestly, I would LIKE them to do, because I know it costs them money for
every song they play and for each listener they have active. I would rather not
have them getting reamed by the FCC and music industry because I stupidly
wandered away and forgot to hit the stop button. Having to restart now and then
is a small price to pay to keep my favorite station online.
At any rate, this is hardly scientific. I second the suggestion to grab a
packet viewer and watch the traffic if this continues to happen.
-Alexis
On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Brett Glass wrote:
::Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:52:20 -0700
::From: Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com>
::To: Ron@usmedrec.com, nnsquad@nnsquad.org
::Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: ISP's resetting RealPlayer?
::
::At 11:23 AM 1/11/2008, Ron Teitelbaum wrote:
::
::>Does anyone else have this issue, or has anyone looked whether or not ISP's
::>might be limiting content by sending resets to clients that are not P2P?
::
::The most likely cause is that your streaming provider, which has limits on the number of streams it can sustain, is timing you out after you've been on a long time. Sometimes a streaming audio server will break an "old" connection to only if all of the available streams are full when it gets a new request. That's only fair; you've listened for awhile and it's now someone else's turn.
::
::The terminated sessions may also be the result of the use of a stateful firewall. When there are lots of long term connections, the tables in the firewall can fill up. It may be forced to throw out state information -- especially when the transaction is being conducted via UDP (which isn't a session-oriented protocol, though RealPlayer uses it as such). When you're going through a NAT firewall there can be no guarantee that UDP port translation will be maintained over an extended period. It would be interesting to see if your connections were still terminated if you used TCP instead.
::
::On the other hand, many ISPs do limit the durations of sessions. People often leave streaming media on and then go home -- for the evening or even for days at a time. If large numbers of people do this (and as an ISP I can tell you from our statistics that it's quite common), it can consume excessive resources. It doesn't help that streaming audio consists of lots of small packets, maximizing network overhead and causing congestion. Having the user click again to keep listening after 5 hours is perfectly reasonable.
::
::Frequently, when I stay in hotels or visit hotspots (e.g. at coffeehouses or airports), I need to re-establish my VPN or SSH sessions every hour or so, presumably for this reason. It's not a big deal; just one click and I'm back online.
::
::Your interrupted streams may also stem from another cause. If you do not have a static IP address, you may find that long term connections are interrupted when your IP address is renewed or changed. In this case, it's not the result of a policy decision by the ISP at all, but just a normal and natural side effect -- and you can avoid it by paying for a static IP address.
::
::--Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET
::
::
::
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