Radio CDN · Platinum
Radio CDN.The nearest server, for every listener.
Your station is hosted on one server, in New York or Bucharest. On Platinum, our radio CDN plays it to each listener from the nearest of five cities, and takes your encoder in at the nearest one too.
- Listeners: nearest server
- Encoders: nearest server
- https link
- AS19624
Nothing to install and nothing to switch on. The panel gives the station its CDN link and the Nearest server encoder settings, and the links and settings you already use keep working beside them.
The network
Five cities, one radio network
Every city on the map answers listeners and takes encoders in. New York and Bucharest also host the stations themselves. Each station's stream travels once from the city that hosts it to every city where it has listeners, along the lines drawn here.
Where a listener is sent
The first city on the list with a healthy server answers. The region is read from the listener's own network, which most public resolvers pass on; otherwise the resolver's location decides, which still lands on the right continent.
| Listeners in | Served from, nearest first |
|---|---|
| North America, and anywhere not listed below | New York |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | Miami, then New York |
| Western Europe and Africa | Amsterdam, then Bucharest, then New York |
| Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia | Bucharest, then Amsterdam, then New York |
| Asia-Pacific | San Francisco, then New York |
An encoder is sent the same way, to the nearest city that takes encoders in.
Listeners
One link, answered by the nearest server
The CDN link is the same for every listener. Where it plays from depends on where they are.
The listener opens the CDN link
Our steering nameserver answers with the healthy servers nearest to the listener's network. The answer is kept for only 60 seconds, so it follows the network as it changes.
The nearest server plays the station
It fetches one copy of your stream from the server the station lives on and hands it to everyone listening there. A new listener starts with a few seconds already buffered: in our tests, audio began 0.25–0.7 seconds after the player connected.
Titles and figures stay whole
Song titles reach every listener as your station sends them, and each listener on every server counts once in your station's figures.
Encoders
Broadcast to the nearest server, heard from your own
Without the CDN, your encoder sends its stream all the way to the station's server. With it, the encoder's connection ends at the nearest of our servers, and the long stretch runs between our own servers, datacenter to datacenter.
One server name and one port
ingest.radio.serverroom.net, port 14000, for Icecast, SHOUTcast 2 and DJ encoders. A SHOUTcast v1 encoder given that port dials 14001 by itself, as it always does.
Passed straight to your station
The nearest server holds no password. It reads which station the encoder is for, from the mount, the password or the Stream ID, and passes everything else on, byte for byte, to the encoder port your station has today.
Your station answers, as always
The password check, DJ hours and blocks, the emergency disconnect, dead-air detection and the air log all stay on the station's own server, so nothing about how the station behaves changes. Repeated wrong passwords from one address are shut out for a while at the nearest server.
When a server fails
What happens when something breaks
Each case below is how the CDN is built to behave, and the last one is the limit of what it can do.
A server stops answering
Every server is checked every 10 seconds. After 2 failed checks in a row it is left out of the answers, and within about a minute and a half new connections go to another server in the same city, or to the next city on the list.
The line between two servers drops
The listener's server reconnects to your station within about a second and keeps its listeners connected through the gap. They hear a short silence, not a hang-up.
The station's own server is down
Then the station is off the air everywhere, as it would be without a CDN. The CDN copies your stream to listeners; it does not stand in for the station.
In your panel
Two new blocks in the Radio tab, nothing to switch on
On a Platinum station the CDN link and the Nearest server settings are already there. Move listeners and encoders over when it suits you: what you use today keeps working.
Overview: CDN link, nearest server
- Link
- https://listen.radio.serverroom.net/number/mount
- Per stream
- one link for each of the station's streams, with copy and open
- Older players
- a plain-http copy of each link, for players that cannot open https
- Beside it
- the station's own links, unchanged
Encoder settings: nearest server
- Server
- ingest.radio.serverroom.net
- Port
- 14000
- Icecast
- mount /number/stream, the same user and password
- SHOUTcast v1
- password number:password
- SHOUTcast 2
- Stream ID number, the same password
- DJ accounts
- their own nearest-server block, with their own login
- Beside it
- direct to your station's server, which also works
"Number" is your station's number, printed in each value in the panel, so you copy them as they are.
Answers
The radio CDN, answered
Which plans include the radio CDN?
Platinum, at its usual price. On Free and Premium, a station's listeners and encoder connect to the station's own server. Moving to Platinum adds the CDN link and the Nearest server settings to the panel, and it stays the same station.
Do my current links and encoder settings stop working?
No. The station's own links, the web player and the encoder settings you use today keep working. The CDN link and the Nearest server settings sit beside them, for you to hand out when you are ready.
Which server will a listener hear the station from?
The nearest city with a healthy server, read from the listener's network: New York for North America, Miami for Latin America and the Caribbean, Amsterdam for Western Europe and Africa, Bucharest for Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, and San Francisco for Asia-Pacific. Each region has the next city to fall back on.
Do CDN listeners count in my statistics?
Yes. Every listener counts once, whichever server they listen from, in the same figures as everyone else.
What does my encoder need?
Only the Nearest server settings from the panel: no TLS option, no plug-in, nothing new to install. Icecast, SHOUTcast v1 and SHOUTcast 2 encoders all take them, and so do DJ accounts with their own login.
Does my password pass through another server?
Your login passes through the nearest server on its way, unchanged. That server keeps no station password and checks none: your station's own server answers the login, exactly as when the encoder connects to it directly.
What happens if a server goes down?
Each server is checked every 10 seconds, and one that fails 2 checks in a row leaves the answers. Within about a minute and a half new listeners and encoders go to another server in the same city or to the next city on the list. If the server that hosts the station is down, the station is off the air, with or without the CDN.
Put every listener on the nearest server
The radio CDN comes with Platinum, the plan with the highest bitrate, the most listeners and the most control. A Free or Premium station moves up in place and keeps everything it has.