[BC] Program transmission suggestions

[Broadcast List USER]

The public Internet is incredibly robust.  Yes, the last mile can  
have problems, especially if you are on a cable "modem" but the  
backbones are amazingly robust, and are self healing.

Recall September 11, 2001.  A good friend of mine was one of the  
original employees in a little start-up called Akamai < http:// 
www.akamai.com/>.  They put "content" around the country so that if a  
lot of people are calling up web pages, they can be served up  
locally.  CNN was a huge customer on 9/11, and CNN.com never even  
burped.  Late in the day he was just so proud that what they did  
survived a test that even they could not imagine.  Clear Channel uses  
Akamai.

Even though World Trade 7 had thousands of servers in it which were  
suddenly taken off-line, it didn't make any difference except for  
those web sites served up ONLY out of there.  DNS were rapidly  
redirected and even most of those sites were back up quickly.  Of  
course, just like phones, LOCAL connectivity was hurt in lower  
Manhattan.

Also, there is no "easy" way for "parts of the [I]nternet capacity  
[to be] reallocated for clear government access/use."  Yes, PEOPLE  
can be sent into colocation facilities to move fiber from public  
routers to government routers, but those government routers would  
have to be brought in, and it isn't like they are sitting on shelves  
ready to go.  I suppose the government could order ISPs to shut down  
residential users, but what about the big Homeland Security muckety- 
muck working from his home?  I can't see it.

Also, remember that fiber has been laid all over the US in  
expectation of the boom that went bust almost 10 years ago.  Today  
you can rent dark fiber for nearly nothing between major cities.   
Then again, actually using it costs a lot of money in equipment needed.


On the other hand, I would hate to depend on the public Internet for  
a STL.  That seems weak on several levels.  First, reliability.   
While the Internet is robust, it is not 100% reliable, and it doesn't  
need to be as it is not normally a "real time" service.  It really  
doesn't matter if your e-mail takes five seconds or five minutes to  
arrive.  However, it DOES matter if you are missing five minutes of  
program audio.

The other issue is the quality.  I have used Barix boxes for  
streaming audio for keeping track of stations in other markets (for  
which we were not doing streaming for the general public).  The  
quality is quite good for listening to on a computer, but for actual  
program audio?  I don't think so!  It just amazes me what passes for  
"acceptable" today.  Just because it doesn't HAVE to pass an Audio  
Proof of Performance doesn't mean it shouldn't.

Nearly a year ago I replaced a FM antenna on a station with a lot of  
apparent multipath.  Well, the new antenna helped, but the station  
still had a lot of problems.  Well, it turned out the music was  
grabbed from all kinds of places, and a lot of it was MP3 files.  We  
just replaced all the music and the "multipath" like distortions went  
away.  It was astounding.  Still, getting the announcers to send  
linear files instead of MP3 voice tracks took some work, but  
eventually they got with the program.

I can see having DSL and some low data rate system as a BACK UP, but  
to crunch everything on the way seems a move away from goodness.  Add  
the fact that it was digital in the automation system, likely  
converted to analog, then digitized again to go into the STL, then  
back to analog to hit the digital audio processor...   All of those  
conversions cause the artifacts to stack up.  Of course, you CAN keep  
it digital, and SHOULD, but if the operation is so low end as to use  
heavily compressed STL, it isn't likely it is gong to stay in the  
digital domain from the automation system to the exciter.

--chip

On Apr 25, 2008, at 12:09 PM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:


> Message: 26
> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:32:48 -0700
> From: Mike McCarthy <Towers at mre.com>
> Subject: Re: [BC] Program transmission suggestions
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080424073219.05857bb0 at oldradio.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> Not to throw acid on the whole idea of public IP concept, but it
> really scares me when one considers the fragility of the public
> internet network.  It might work fine today when IP traffic loads are
> nominal.  What about when there is a major event and general usage
> skyrockets or there is an attack on the core servers?  Or worse yet,
> there is a national emergency and parts of the internet capacity are
> reallocated for clear government access/use.
> [...]
>
> MM