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Technical Support

Email: support@alexanderstreet.com
Telephone: 1-800-889-5937

When reporting a problem please include your customer name, e-mail address, phone number, domain name or IP address and that of your web proxy server if used.

Periodic Buffering

Symptoms

  • You can hear music through the Player.
  • Playback is regularly disturbed by period of buffering, where the music stops and the players says "buffering".


Cause

  • Buffering issues are usually caused by a lack of sufficient bandwidth for the internet connection. Occasionally buffering is caused because the internet itself is congested (which means the problem should go away by itself), but often it is related to the connection between the computer and the internet (the modem, internet, T1 line etc).
  • Alexander Street Press recommends that each computer accessing the service have at least a 56kbps connection to the internet.
  • If you are within an institution, they may use traffic shapers. These are used on institutional networks to control the bandwidth and can be configured to severely restrict the bandwidth available to each computer, or restrict the bandwidth available for media streams such as music. You should contact your administrator, who will be able to change the settings on the traffic shaper.
  • There may be a problem with your connection to the internet. If you are using a dial up or broadband connection you should contact your service provider.


Solution

  • Contact your system administrator and ensure that traffic shapers are not restricting the bandwidth available to computers using our music products.
  • If you are using a dial up or broadband connection you should contact your service provider and get them to ensure that there are no connection errors on your service and you have at least 56kbps bandwidth connection to the internet.
  • You should try accessing the service from another computer to narrow down the cause of the issue.


Resources

  • You can test the speed (bandwidth) of your internet connection on the DSLreports site.
  • I can't hear music when off-site


Symptoms

  • When you access the service on-campus you can play music.
  • When you access the service off-campus, you cannot hear music.


Cause

  • It is likely that, when you are accessing services and databases your institution has subscribed to for off-campus usage, you will use a proxy server to access those services and databases.
  • The proxy server your library uses may not be configured correctly to support streaming media.
  • The proxy server may not support streaming media.


Solution

  • You should contact your administrator and report the problem.
  • The administrator may be able to configure the proxy server to support streaming media. This must be configured to support Windows Media Streaming through port 1755.
  • The administrator may need to contact the proxy server vendor to query compatibility.
  • If the proxy server is not compatible with streaming media, then the institution can chose to use a referral URL authorization for off-campus users, allowing those users to access the service without using the institutions proxy server.