How can
I find out if clients are having difficulty accessing my
content?
It is not always easy to know if clients are receiving your
content properly. Many clients do not call your attention to a
problem, and client-side errors often are not apparent at the
server level.
Logs are extremely valuable for determining the effectiveness of
your streaming media broadcast. Whenever you create a publishing
point, you should enable the appropriate logging plug-in so you can
analyze the successes and failures of your broadcast. A careful
review of the logs after a broadcast can often reveal not only what
problems have occurred and when, but also a possible solution.
The following log file entries are typically the most helpful
when trying to identify a client-side problem:
x-duration. This is the amount of time that the player
rendered the stream. If the time in this field is less than the
overall length of the content, the client may have been
dropped.
c-status. These are codes that describe the client
connection status. Certain common connection problems appear in
this field.
avgbandwidth. This is the average bandwidth of the
connection. If it is lower than the bit rate of the stream from the
server, the client may have reduced bandwidth capacity.
c-bytes. This is the number of bytes received by the
client. If this number differs from the number of bytes sent by the
server (sc-bytes), then packet loss has occurred.
c-pkts-lost-client. This is the number of packets that
were not delivered to the client.
c-buffercount. This is the number of times the client
buffered the stream. A high buffer count value can indicate
bandwidth problems.
For more information about how log files are used to identify
streaming problems, see Logging data and events.
