Error: listeners being disconnected and asked for a password to listen toradio

The delivery server is the server to which your encoder connects to serveyour stream. Streaming servers then connect to the delivery server andstream your audio to listeners. If the delivery server goes down, a backupserver takes over. This architecture allows streaming to tens of thousandsof listeners while minimising downtime. In the event of an outage, our teamsare automatically alerted and will do their utmost to rectify the situationas quickly as possible. There is therefore no need to phone or e-mail us. Ifnecessary, we will then e-mail all of our radio streaming clients withinformation about what caused the outage.

If a streaming servergoes down, this will cause tens of thousands of listeners to disconnect atthe same time, all of whom will then attempt to reconnect. This then leadsto an overload and causes listeners to receive the password request. Theythen need to attempt to reconnect half a minute or so later. In general, thesituation will return to normal within a few minutes.

In terms ofour live statistics, every listener connection request calls a script whichrecords the data and forwards a connection authorisation to our streamingservers; this is done quickly and transparently. For all streams in generalor for any individual stream, customers may also configure a script to be called that will authenticateusers in the case of premium streams and display the password window.

Unfortunately, when a server goes down, all listeners connected tothat server, for all radio streams, are disconnected and obviously attemptto reconnect. The load balancing system does not know whether the server isdown and therefore sends some connection requests to that server.

Even when a server is starting up and working normally, there is always asmall delay before the situation returns to normal, given that there are alarge number of connection requests. It is also possible that if a large ISPhas an outage, listeners will suddenly disconnect and reconnect at the sametime, causing a bottleneck. 99% of the time, our server operation remainsstable and fortunately, they rarely go down.

Note that:
- the streams is interrupted whenever this prompt appears
- the prompt also appears when streams are unstable