Network audit

Alejo Duque

March 17, 2008

The Greek Theater (including it's location:)

The case:

On May 18 2008, Pauline Oliveros will perform in Casiss at the Camargo Fundation. Locus Sonus was invited to take part and I volunteer to help set up the audio stream, then realized that Pauline had plans also for a video stream, in such case we will have to use http://giss.tv since the creacast server that locus sonus uses is not ready for ogg-theora video streams. (a test or any infos from people informed on such server will be appreciated).

Network Audit

For the case we visited the Camargo fundation and did some stream tests, both from Macintosh machines using the locus sonus stream patch. Since they have there a strong network link everythng went smooth and easy, the sound bounced back and forth from the server in a stable way, no bumps.

There are many applications out there to monitor the state of a network link, since its such a big field some just throw us back info related to the use of our interface and not really describe the transfer rate between the Icecast server and the client sending the "sound" data. Iperf will allow us to determine the quality of a link, perhaps this is to much, but it will be a safe and fast way to determine the status of a link to the creacast server. We will need to install iperf on the server or course so to communicate with it directly.

http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~ytl/monitoring/iperf/description.html

Since we don't have iperf installed on the locus creacast server, I decided to use Slurm to see in realtime the state of the link while streaming.

StreamBox in Camargo

Part of the visit was also about checking the place to see where to locate a locus stream box, Jean-Pierre offered this little room that has a window that looks to the see, what a place to set up an old pentiumIII... :) anyway, we will need a microphone and hopefully in the next visit we can leave a new stream box set. One other thing we will need is to trace a wireless link since theres no cable that gets to the place, the nearest antenna is about 30mts distant and theres a clear line of sight. (see the pictures)

The next visit will be sometime in April hoping this time we can set up the streambox, in the meantime I will make a video explaining how to use the stream patch, both for audio and for video so its easier for anyone to use it.