Problem with LAN at work

[andre79]

i am currently listning to online radio on z1035.com.

but lately i have been having problems listening to it. it's fine for the first min. but then it stops playing and says it's buffering, then it plays then it stops, and it just repeats this over and over. then it just stops playing all together and it says attempting to reconnect, which it never does.

i have contacted the radio station and they sent me this link to try http://69.90.16.12/z103.5_fm, but i get the same problem. the radio station says it isn't blocking my ip address so it's something wrong on my end. i have no problems listening to it at home, just at work.

anyone have any ideas on what it could be? using windows 2000 pro sp 4, with the latest windows media player.

I am pretty sure it has something with our LAN at work. How can i find out to be sure.

[deddard]

Hi
There are a couple of things which can cause problems like this. The most obvious are firewalls and bandwidth usage. Your company may be inspecting every package which arrives from the internet, which may cause the firewall to examine the package, buffer it and then pass it on to you. The other thing is simply that the lan traffic is heavy - if lots of people are using the network, then it's possible that your radio will be fragmented. Normally such media streams need to be played continuously (otherwise it would sound awful) so the system packages small amounts of radio in order for you to hear, rather than fragment the signal in the same way that a text file or a www page gets fragmented.
You'll need to check with the systems administrator to find out how to work round this (if they will let you)