Comcast Murders Broward Feeds

UPDATE: As of 11:05 Comcast is back up, but it keeps going out for a few minutes at a time. I guess they're disconnecting network nodes along the line back to their head-end. Expect brief outages the rest of the day.

Comcast promised their Xfinity cable internet service would go down for an extended period of time in order to allow them to "upgrade" their network to whatever 10G means this week. I guess today is the day because there's a truck with a ladder up to a utility pole and no bits are flying across my cable modem.

When it comes back, all the Broward feeds will come back:

Bote's Mixer Board

Bote's Wild Feed

Bote's F.E.C. Oakland Park feed

Bote's CSX/SFRTA Oakland Park feed

Good thing I'm building a system locally on my bench LAN today and that still works just peachy keen!

Comcast Up and Down

UPDATE 2021.04.07:  Comcast has been stable for the better part of 24 hours so I'll declare things up and running again. Now the trouble is that I have a new public i.p. address, so I have to update that address in the other end of my point-to-point VPN links, which is not going well.

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Comcrap has been up and down all morning (mostly down) so the Broward area feeds have followed suit. 

 I'm not declaring that things are back up until at least tomorrow. Comcast's app first said it would be repaired by 3PM, then when I checked an hour later it said by 4PM. Extending the promised repair time is their oldest trick in the book.

Just be patient. You be patient, sir, or you won't get anything.

Broward County Goes P25

 You might have noticed that the old Broward County Project 16 analog trunked system has recently gotten very quiet. That's because they have switched over to their shiny new Project 25 digital trunked system.

Because it is new and we are hobbyists and not the radio shop, we don't know all the new talkgroups and need to map them out. This takes time and a coordinated effort by interested hobbyists who know their favorite areas well enough to infer what the new talkgroups are used for when it is not obvious.

As of right now only Bote's Mixer Board still hums along with Fort Lauderdale public safety stuff. Bote's Wild feed will go silent when Broward Fire Dispatch 1 switches over to the new P25 system. I hope to find the time to develop a suitable receive setup for the new P25 Phase 2 (TDMA) trunked system.

Stay tuned.

CUTOVER

Please refresh your DNS or restart your player to pick up the new DNS entry pointing to listen.trackstreamer.com (which is the same as listen.botecomm.com now).

It might be a little bumpy the nexty day or two, but it should even out once I get everything settled down. I'm trying something that might not work.

UPDATE 1: 2020.05.15 11:35 EDT - Well, that didn't work. Still more configurururing to figure out. Computers, huh?

UPDATE 2: 2020.05.16 10:17 - So far, so good. Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Comcast Repaired--I Think

A Comcast technician has just replaced the drop from the pole to my house and even went the extra mile to replace the connectors going to the splitter with my neighbor and the lightning arrestor. There was a gash in the old drop cable that could have been introducing problems, so we shall see.

Only time will tell whether the intermittent outages that lasted 2-5 minutes at a time are finally a thing of the past on the Broward feeds. This includes the Mixer Board, Wild Feed, and F.E.C. Fort Lauderdale feeds.

Moved to Listen.TrackStreamer.com

All feeds have been migrated to listen.trackstreamer.com for those listening on WinAmp or other media player. The port number and mount points remain the same, only the domain name changed.

I updated the HTML5 players on my personal web page describing the streams in detail, so they work once again.

I have no idea if or when TuneIn radio will bother themselves to update my streams on their platform with the new information that I sent them. If past experience is any guide, don't hold your breath.

Moving to Listen.Trackstreamer.com

I'm pointing my feeds to a different feed server at
http://listen.trackstreamer.com:8000

This means that any sites that glom off my colostreaming.com feeds will go silent after the cutover. This includes TuneIn Radio, which could never seem to get my feed detail listings correct.

You can either plug the new links into your WinAmp player or if you don't care about the channel tags or features of a real player you can listen to the HTML5 players on my personal web site (see the pane to the right under Listen).

The "Web Players and Details" page on my site has HTML5 players embedded in it that kind of work, plus detailed info on each feed that doesn't change often.

I'll post here when the cutover happens.

Comcast Outage

Comcast Xfinity cable Internet went down about 10:30 this morning. Service was restored about 15:40 so all feeds are back up.

Now it's down to seeing if this intermittent outage during the heat of the day continues.

FEC and Wild Feed Up

I have restored the Florida East Coast Railway and Wild Feeds for now.

The F.E.C. feed is the same as it ever was, still a rinky dink magnetic mount antenna sitting on the roof, doesn't hear all that well.

Bote's Wild Feed monitors Broward fire Dispatch 1, the tac channels, and some of the beach patrol channels until they become unbearable. This feed could change at a moment's notice. It is a wild feed after all.

Broward Feed Computer Down

The little Dell shoebox computer that sends out the streams for Bote's Mixer Board with Fort Lauderdale fire and Bote's Wild Feed which carries Broward County fire and B.S.O. Oakland Park has not worked properly since the latest Windows Update.

So both Broward County feeds are down for now until I can rebuild that system.

Watch this blog for updates.

ATnT and Their Crappy Network

Here we go again! The AT&T serving my DSL is acting all kinds of screwy again, not 2 weeks after they found a core router in trouble deep in their internal network. No e.t.r. but Comcast can't come fast enough!

I'll update this post when the Mixer Board and Wild feeds are normal again. I'm just going to shut down the feed computer since it does no good to have it keep hammering the Icecast server to no avail.

Broward Feeds Screwy

UPDATE: Thanks to Lu being proactive AT&T discovered a problem with a core router in their internal network that was affecting a number of customers. Like throwing a switch Monday afternoon packets started flowing "normally" again. Both Broward County feeds have resumed service until the next AT&T routing debacle.

Due to technical problems well beyond my control, any feed originating over my super-crappy AT&T DSL link at my house in Fort Lauderdale is basically useless. It's an uplink bandwidth or routing problem so the Icecast server gets starved of packets and keeps repeating the introductory announcement or gives you a few brief syllables of traffic then goes to the "feed down" music. I have shut down the feed computer to save some juice since it's not doing much useful anyway.

Sorry about that, chief, but unfortunately the best solution is weeks away under my current schedule. This is a hobby for me so I do the best I can, but work and other commitments take precedence. I never thought I'd say this, but Comcast will solve this and many other problems around here as soon as I can schedule an installation.

FtL Boat Show

The Fort Lauderdale Boat Show runs from today through Monday at Bahia Mar out on the beach and at the Broward County Convention Center. Fort Lauderdale fire department has established a special event command post at the boat show and operates on fire tactical channel D.

They've already had a guy fall into the water, but he got back on dry land and they checked him out and declared him healthy.

Monitor Bote's Mixer Board to hear all the fire department festivities. FtL police district 1 covers the beach out on A1A now in case you hear them on Bote's Wild Feed.

UPDATE 2011.10.28 15:00 - Fort Lauderdale police have switched the units working the boat show detail over to channel 4A Special Events 1 during the peak times of the boat show. I can't guarantee anything, but I'll try to stream it as much as possible on my Mobile Feed.

I can guarantee that I will NOT be streaming it during game 7 of the World Series tonight since I will be chatting on my laptop with other primates during the game. Until about 20:00 tonight it should be up, although that special event traffic isn't all that scintillating if you ask me.

Planned outage

NEVER MIND. ALL OPERATIONS NORMAL NOW. Disregard below message.

Both the Mixer Board and Wild Feed will be down late this afternoon for about an hour. They should be back up no later than this evening.

Check back to have a listen. If you hear the Syncopated Clock you'll know they are still down. I'll update this blog entry when they are back up for good.

Changes to Deerfield, BSO district 5

Deerfield Beach fire has surrendered and joined Broward County. Their fire fighters were sworn in Friday morning and now operate off Broward fire Dispatch 2 talkgroup, along with every other department already on there. They use the same tactical and car-to-car channels as everybody else on Dispatch 2. No word yet on what will become of their little trunked system, but at last report even Deerfield lifeguards were rumored to be moving over to Event 4 or Event 5 on the Broward system, which would leave the old Deerfield system devoid of users.

On the police side, Broward Sheriff's Office district 5 serving the unincorporated wild, wild west of Fort Lauderdale will move to BSO channel 7A to join Oakland Park and Lauderdale Lakes cops already there. Expect traffic on that channel to double as there is no end to the crime and punishment in district 5.

You might recall that it used to be districts 5 and 12 together on channel 6A before the great refarming a year or so ago. It looks like we couldn't stand the prosperity.

Pompano Beach fire moves to Wild Feed

Owing to the overwhelming popularity of Bote's Wild Feed, Pompano Beach Fire dispatch has moved operations to Broward County fire Dispatch 5 which is served by the Wild Feed. No longer will you hear Pompano fire on Bote's Mixer Board, only Fort Lauderdale fire as well as the lifeguards for both those cities (as long as I can stand it, anyway).

Pompano fire will mix it up with the other Broward fire departments on their existing 3 tactical talkgroups, plus the 12-zone talkgroups for mutual aid interoperability when needed.

Additionally, Lighthouse Point, Sea Ranch Lakes, and Lauderdale by the Sea fire departments will join Pompano Beach fire officially on 1 August, 2011 at 06:00 since they all abut each other in the northeast corner of the county.

The law enforcement agencies for all those jurisdictions will consolidate their operations on a handful of talkgroups on the Broward County system as well. I have no plans to carry their police traffic, just making note of it to document it.

More info as it arrives. I will post the updated channel lineup on my personal web site About Bote's feeds, clickable in the pane to the right.

Fort Lauderdale BOLO announcements

I am trying a new service on my Wild Feed to improve awareness of important police calls. I programmed a separate system in the 996 scanner that will only listen to the multi-select calls from Fort Lauderdale and Pompano police consoles.

The scanner does not always handle these calls properly on the standard talkgroup ids, so we will see how this works out. Of course, if the scanner is stuck listening to some other talkgroup yammering away you will still miss these announcements, but at least they will stick out of the crowd better with this new method.

Dania Fire merges with Broward County

Dania Beach Fire Department became part of Broward Sheriff Office's Department of Fire and Rescue on January 29, 2011.

The Dania Beach department, Broward's oldest, will become the seventh municipality with BSO Fire Rescue. The others are: Cooper City, Lauderdale Lakes, Pembroke Park, Southwest Ranches, West Park and Weston. BSO Fire Rescue also serves Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and the unincorporated areas of the county.

It is unclear on what final radio channels Dania fire will operate. Since the switch:

• Broward Joint Ops 1 (formerly 12A) has been used as an intercom between Broward and Hollywood fire main dispatch for automatic aid (mutual aid) calls;
• Broward JOps 2 (12B) has been patched with Hollywood fire dispatch, although the dispatcher's transmissions do not always come through reliably on 12B;
• Broward JOps 3 (12C) has been patched with Broward Dispatch 2 (formerly Fire North channel) for Hollywood units running mutual aid into Dania;
• Broward JOps 4 (12D) is patched to Hollywood fire tac 1 N for Dania units running mutual aid into Hollywood.

This sounds more confusing than it needs to be, but the situation is fluid and there will likely be changes in the future. Up until this switch Broward would assign any of 12B, 12C, or 12D for fire units to conduct training drills, but these same channels were also used on working incidents for interoperability communications which was confusing. Now when you see JOps 1, 2, 3, or 4 you can assume it has something to do with Dania or Hollywood fire calls.

Dania fire and Hollywood police and fire used to operate on their own separate system that is also a site hung off the Broward trunking zone controller. Since the switch Dania units must be operating on the Joint Ops talkgroups, presumably until they get their radios programmed to add the usual line-up of Broward fire channels.

Hollywood police and fire radio channels remain unchanged, only Dania has moved over to the Broward core system for daily operations.

Tornado watch

South Florida is under a tornado watch and the strong cold front is barreling through now. Strong gusty winds are knocking out power around the area so the feeds might go down. They'll be back up when FP&L restores power should that happen.

Winterfest Boat Parade

Fort Lauderdale hosts the annual Winterfest Boat Parade of Lights this evening starting at 18:30 E.S.T. It's a pretty big deal with viewers lining the shore of the IntraCoastal Waterway from Lauderdale up to Pompano Beach.

I have restricted Bote's Wild Feed to SEARCH on the Fort Lauderdale trunked system in case any new talkgroups pop up. You will hear traffic that is not normally heard on that feed for the duration of this special event.