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Bcaseu yuo dno't mindv oice's tyops March 19 2024



NEWS
Here is a listing of the current news plus the older news entries.

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Relocation - The story of RSN\'s 36+ Hour Downtime Posted by: voice
Sorry about the excessive downtime last weekend folks. Rest assured that RSN is still around and I did just recently move the site to a new hosting provider.

So, what happened then?

The previous host, Razor Servers, was relocating their physical datacenter to a new set of facilities as they apparently got bought out by a bigger company. The time window for this was supposed to be Saturday night through 5AM CDT Monday morning, however after the time window expired the server was still unavailable. It was later revealed the hosting company goofed up some routing configurations and essentially set my server, and apparently quite a few others, out into a routing loop. During this time the server was physically powered on but no one could get to it. This routing loop exceeded 36 hours before it was resolved, 36 fucking hours...

Needless to say I was not pleased and some of you know I am short on patience and temper. So my solution was quick and simple, move RSN to a new provider. I had been with another hosting provider for over a year at the same time, they host Sonikku, without any sort of issue whatsoever. Moving RSN itself was rather easy due to backups, hurray for backups! However there were some side sites that could not be relocated until the old RSN server was back online. The old server came back yesterday and today marks the end of the relocation. Anyone hosted with me that is currently experiencing issues should try to get in contact with me.

Added bonus, for the price I was paying for the old server I know have two servers. RSN is now load balanced between the US and the UK!
(4) Comments Posted on June 27 2013

Moar RSN Radio Changes! Posted by: voice
Seems to be my main focus right now....

Anywho, new changes:
- New Streamer: I have swapped out the old streamer for a more lightweight and capable streamer. Thats right folks, cheesy RSN Radio bumpers!
- New Codec: OPUS! This is a new open source codec that is supposed to give AAC+ a run for its money in terms of quality, right now I don't have a main stream outside of the 24/7 channel, but you can listen to it by tuning your OPUS capable audio players to http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/247.opus Please let me know how it sounds / works out for you.
- Returning Codec: AAC+ is back again, aside from the reasons I listed before as to why I dropped it, the old streamer was having problems with it. Given that I have obtained a new streamer that seems capable working with the format I have decided to bring it back in, http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/rsnradio.mp4
(0) Comments Posted on April 13 2013

RSN Radio Change - Goodbye AAC Posted by: voice
So soon after the last one? Yup.

All I did really was move RSN Radio's Ogg stream to http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/rsnradio.ogg, this allows WinAMP to be able to play it without hassle apparently *shrugs*. The MP3 stream's bitrate was bumped up from 56kbps to 128kbps.

I have dropped AAC. Why?
A. The encoder I'm using will not support it for some reason where I am using it.
B. I honestly hear no real quality difference between the 56kbps Ogg Vorbis stream and the 56kbps AAC stream. Wanna know a bit of irony? The 56kbps Ogg Vorbis stream sounds the same as the 128kbps MP3 stream. Figure that out.
C. AAC is not needed. With the MP3 stream I have pretty much everyone covered, iPhone and Android both support MP3 natively as do most browsers.

Coming Soon:
HTML5 based web player for RSN Radio. Its actually live right now at http://www.randomsonicnet.org/rsnradio?rsnrd=1 but there are issues with Firefox not being able to play Chained Ogg Vorbis streams at this time, I do know there is a patch in the build stream for Firefox so this issue should be resolved in three months. What it amounts to is you'll only be able to hear one song before Firefox will stop. Chrome/Chromium have no problems at this time with it. I have not tested it with Internet Explorer however the web player is set to use Ogg and fallback to MP3. Opera is known to work with it.
(1) Comments Posted on December 5 2012

How About An Update? Posted by: voice
Hey there, its me again!

Sorry for the lack of any updates, quite frankly there haven't been many. What has happened since the last time I posted an update is the following:

- New Server:

After six years with my previous host I decided it was time to move on to a better hosting solution. What I get in return for this new server is better hardware (always a plus) and way more monthly transfer than I have ever been previously allocated. This provides me with the ability to bring forth new features that you may or may not find cool, such as...

- The Minecraft server is back:

For those who do remember, back in the day I ran a Minecraft server for a few months, didn't really pan out too well due to the old server hardware. With this new hardware, however, I am more than able to bring it back. Feel like checking it out? Point your Minecraft client to mc.randomsonicnet.org. Don't have a client but want to see whats up anyways? Check out http://mc.randomsonicnet.org:8123/, it is a dynamically updating view of the current map on the server.

- New radio stream:

I am still working on getting this to work on the 24/7 stream, but I have begun to do my live show in three formats: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and AAC+. If you choose to listen in I am usually doing my show Thursdays at 6PM Central Time, Midnight for those in the UK, on the following stream addresses: http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/rsnradio (Ogg Vorbis), http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/rsnradio.mp3, and http://radio.randomsonicnet.org:8000/rsnradioaac. I am not sure when or how I will be able to get all three going on the 24/7 stream but it is a work in progress.

As usual, comments and feedback are always appreciated. I may not have been doing anything with the main RSN site, but I assure you RSN is still very much alive :P
(5) Comments Posted on November 25 2012

Oh Look, Another IRC Update Posted by: voice
Yep, once again I feel compelled to remind you all about the IRC chatrooms RSN has in place to allow real-time discussions and whatnot (screw you, facebook chat!) So I've still got the AfterNET channel but in addition to that I've added another #rsn on SurrealChat. "This is madness!" you might say, but I do have the channels linked via a relay bot which allows all of you to discuss Sonic-y things in happiness....or rage. For more information click the "Chat Now!" link on the left side of the main page, it'll give you all the details and rules. 8-)
(0) Comments Posted on May 25 2012

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