Quick question about listening on the internet

[NeilRaimo]

I have a Dell Laptop, Windows 98, with PeoplePC internet service. I can listen to all the Equity stations on line, WMID/The Buzz/WZXL, etc., with no problem. When I try other stations, for instance WRAT, The Coast, etc., I get the audio, then it goes off, the buffer keeps starting at zero and goes to 100, plays a few seconds then stops, and starts over. This also happens in other areas, WPLJ, WMMR, and with a few stations around the country I tried. It seems only the Equity stations play OK. Its the same stream and system these stations use, except for the RAT, which has some unknown stream, which won't even play, its dead. WMTR won't play either, can anyone give me advice on this. Thanks in Advance; Neil Raimo

 

[Bill981]

Presuming that PeoplePC is a dial-up service, the absolute fastest speed you can achieve (regardless of what the advertising claims) is 53 kbps. That dial-up speed is extremely hard to get, unless you live next door to the central office, and the ISP's modem bank is in there, too. Otherwise, you're probabally getting speeds of 24-33k. Sometimes you may get into the 40's. If the station you're listening to is streaming at a rate <= your connect rate, AND you're not downloading anything, or surfing the web downloading web pages, etc., you will probably get a fairly stable connection. If the stream > your connect rate (56 & 64 kbps is fairly common) then your player has to constantly "catch-up" to the stream. A 33k connection and a 56k stream = 58% of the data gets through. Stations pay for streaming bandwidth, so lower bitrate=lower bandwith=fewer$$$.