How is this relaying....

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I have two servers that are owned by the same entity. The name of the stations are similar. Call one Bob's Music Cafe, the other Bob's Country Cafe. Both servers are on the same dedicated server, but different port numbers (i.e. port 20398 for one, and port 7952 for the other). Both run SHOUTcast V1. Customer does not want to move to v2.

When looking at logs on the port 20338 SC server, I see the message:
<02/26/17@11:14:40> [yp_tch] new backup server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:7952
and on the port 7924 SC server, i see:
<02/26/17@11:14:15> [yp_tch] new backup server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:20398

Both IPs in the log's status line are the same (same box), both SHOUTcast servers have "No" set to allow relays, and neither is relaying the other (each has nothing in the relay field). Their respective DJ's are able to stream live, yet that status line appears every 10-15 minutes.

So.... how is it possible that I am seeing this status line on both servers when neither is relaying the other? By the way, this does not appear on any of the other SC servers on the same box.

Let the mystery solving begin!
The simple answer is that they are not relays of each other and it's a long standing SHOUTcast YP bug from working with 1.x DNAS.

In more detail, what that log message implies is that based on what the SHOUTcast YP knows (which is not a lot), it believes that the two streams are different instances of the same station and so sends that back to each DNAS. That is done by the YP in such cases so that if either of the DNAS gets full then the DNAS knows where to try to redirect new listeners over so they can still get a working stream.

Sadly there's cases where the stream matching for 1.x based streams doesn't work right (it has to be a bit vague in how it works to cope with changing IP addresses, weird re-naming patterns that is done for per-DJ sessions, etc - having tried to tweak it over a few years when I was working on SHOUTcast, it's better than it was but still has edge cases like you're experiencing) which is one of the whole things behind 2.x and it's authhash system so the DNAS provides a fixed point of data to allow for the YP to work reliably.

Some times restarting the stream or tweaking the name can correct it but the only official line you'll most likely get from what remains of SHOUTcast support is that you'd have to move to 2.x as they don't support 1.x (is still not clear when they'll be dropping 1.x listings).

-dro
Thanks for the explanation DrO... sure wish you were still working there as I did submit this to SHOUTcast Support about a month ago and am still awaiting for a reply from then.

Thinking it would correct the issue, I had been working on the customer to switch to v2 when Chrome stopped supporting v1, but seems the owner is old school and refuses to budge. I will keep at it.

I appreciate the detailed reply... thanks again!.