If a radio station is streaming, it is bound to receive complaints by the users regarding the quality of the stream. Even the station owners get worried at times as they experience high drops at certain times of a day. The most important question here is whether the stations are reaching out to a wide audience or not. Let me share a secret with all of you. What the radio servers should do is to use Port 80.
So what is the major problem with online radio streams? For certain online radio listeners, their ISPs block a few specific port numbers. For example, you may not be able to hear your favorite radio channels when you are at your university, school, college or workplace. In general, when you start streaming, the default port number assigned to you is above 8000.
So how do they block the stations? The answer is simple; they have firewalls restricting data coming from a few specific port numbers. Is there any solution? Well, as I already mentioned, you should stream radio stations using Port 80.
Why Should Port 80 be used for Online Radio Streaming?
Port 80 is the allowable port number for any sort of interaction through web browsing. Therefore, if you are able to view a website properly, you are obviously using Port 80 for that purpose.
As I already said, most of the radio servers are streamed via a port number which is above 8000. So, if you set the radio streaming port number to be 80 from your control panel, it will be acting as a proxy. So, the entire stream from your regular port will be redirected via the port number 80.
Therefore, you can easily trick the firewall and make it believe that the audio stream is coming from a regular website. Thus, the firewall which would have blocked you otherwise lets you pass through it and you are easily able to hear to the stream.
How Is It Advantageous to the Radio Station Owners?
The customer base is automatically increased by the radio station owners when they use port 80 for streaming purpose. At certain times, there can be extra charges associated for streaming the radio station via port 80, but, as a radio station owner, it is a good drawback for you when you are able to reach out to a huge number of audiences.
If you have streamed radio stations online and faced blocking problem in the past, this article should be of help to you. If you have tried to use port 80 and were able to resolve the problem successfully, please share the story through the comments feature.
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