AlienBBC - stops every 10 or 15 seconds

[minimole]

Hi guys. I've got 2 x SB v1 players connected to my home lan (cabled) and an 8mbps ADSL broadband connection. SlimServer on Windows 2000.

I've had AlienBBC playing successfully for months. Over the last week, without changing anything on the server that I'm aware of, I've found that all the streams (those I've tested - R1, R2, R4 - live and "play again") will only play for about 10 seconds, then break for a second, start playing again - from point it stopped. Not missing any content, just interrupted. Same result on both players.

Other streams, eg Radio Paradise, RadioIO, work perfectly.

Any ideas please? I miss the Beeb!
Thanks.

[bpa]

Where are you based ?
I've heard of some non UK (e.g. spain) other users having similar problems even with the BBC web based player (RealPlayer).

[minimole]

I'm in the UK. I can listen to Beeb radio online with no problems. I just did a quick test and listened to R4 live, via their Windows Media player streams, which was fine, and simultaneously played the same station via AlienBBC which suffered the same stop/start problem every 10-15 seconds.

[bpa]

Can you run the AlienBBC standalone test which is run on installation of AlienBBC and see if R4 works OK ?

[minimole]

Hmm ... I ran the installation again and ran the mplayer test which worked fine. I then tried a live and recorded stream on R4 and they work too. Reinstalling seems to have cured the problem - thank you!

[bpa]

Possibly .. I've had similar events last year and did nothing and things got back to normal - I blame it on engineering/repair work somewhere which results in a server/network being overloaded.

[minimole]

I think I spoke too soon ... This morning - not working again. Same problem / symptoms. Ran the installation again and tested with mplayer - works perfectly but SqueezeBox still stopping / starting as per usual. Very strange. Stopped / started Windows service and re-booted - didn't help. Is it some kind of buffering thing I wonder? Are there are any user configurable buffering settings anywhere?
Thanks.

[bpa]

Buffering may be part of the problem but AlienBBC already has a 128kbyte buffer of RealAudio which if it was exhausted the stream would be restarted.

Is the elapsed time displayed being reset to zero with each interruption or does it continue ?
Does the same problem happen with Listen again programs ?

The other possible problem would be between SS and SB but check the above first.

[minimole]

Today's weather: working perfectly.

God knows what's going on. Anyway, thanks very much for you help - much appreciated.