CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-chromefirefoxstreamingicecastinternet-radio
Daniel
Daniel

Reputation: 11

Some browsers are caching an icecast stream instead of playing it

I'm running three Icecast servers, all streaming the same content. Since about two weeks, I got some users reporting that they cannot listen to the stream anymore. Their browser is trying to load the stream but it never starts playing. I started to dig into this a bit and I am able to reproduce the issue.

It's interesting that this issue does not occur on all devices. I got two PCs here, both on Windows 10, both running on the latest Firefox. One can stream without any issues, one starts downloading audio data but never plays it. Opening the Icecast mountpoint in VLC works in all cases and the stream starts within a second or so. On a device that is not playing the stream in Firefox, it neither works in Chrome. On the other hand, devices that are able to stream in Firefox also are in Chrome. I guess it has something to do with the OS..?

I started Wireshark on one PC that is affected by the issue and was able to see that the browser starts to download the audio data from the Icecast server but instead of playing it, it's caching it. I believe that the browser somehow "thinks" this is a download, not a stream. When I restart the Icecast process on the server during this caching period, the caching of the browser stops and it starts to play - but only for a few seconds, until the end of the cached stream is reached.

I assume that some browsers are waiting for some kind of EOF instead of just playing the stream. Of course, an EOF is never sent in a live stream.

Here is the link to the mountpoint of one of the Icecast servers: http://185.80.187.35/live

It seems that it doesn't matter which one of the three Icecast servers you use. If one works, the other two also work. If one doesn't, opening the stream from the other servers fail as well.

I have no idea what's happening there. Since the issue occurred, nothing in the setup has been changed. I tried to switch the audio format from MP3 to OGG, but this didn't fix the issue - so I switched back to MP3. I'm currently streaming at 64 kbps. I don't think this might be an issue since this worked for years, but might it be that such a low bitrate is not supported by some browsers any more? Should I raise the bitrate? Maybe add some HTTP headers to the Icecast config? I'm confused and running out of ideas.

PS: I just noticed that I got the same issue in Edge and IE. It really seems to depend on the PC, not the browser.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 934

Answers (1)

Brad
Brad

Reputation: 163528

When the embedded player doesn't work on a device, the stream on its' own tab doesn't play either.

This is not the behavior I'm seeing.

The site is HTTPS, yes, but the stream isn't.

Due to new security restrictions, this is no longer valid. If you open your browser's developer tools, you'll see errors about it.

You need to enable HTTPS on your Icecast server, or downgrade your site to HTTP if you want to play from non-secure origins.

Upvotes: 0

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