[Icecast] Icecast 2.1 RC2 Announcement

[oddsock]

We are pleased to announce that the long awaited 2.1 version of icecast is 
nearing release.  Since there has been quite a bit of changes since 2.0, we 
thought it best to release a "release candidate" version.  We welcome any 
testing on this version, and highly encourage current users to send us 
feedback about the testing.

For those wondering what happened to RC1, we did a small RC1 internal 
release that found a few issues (mostly minor) that we've cleaned up and 
made RC2 ready for public consumption.

RC2 Binaries and Source can be downloaded here :

Source: http://svn.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast-2.1RC2.tar.gz
Fedora Core 1 RPM : 
http://svn.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast-2.1RC2-1.i386.rpm
Source RPM : http://svn.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast-2.1RC2-1.src.rpm
Win32 Binary Installer : 
http://svn.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast2_win32_2.1RC2_setup.exe

The following gives a brief overview of the changes in 2.1 (and special 
thanks to everyone who has contributed fixes and suggestions as well as all 
those who help us tremendously with help testing in between releases) :

Icecast 2.1
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****New features for 2.1 (in no particular order):****

-Listener Authentication-

   Icecast now supports listener authentication.  This provides a mechanism for
   creating/maintaining users and passwords for listeners.  Currently, we only
   have implemented a simple, file-based storage for users and passwords.  New
   authenticators are on the horizon (such as URL-based or possibly MySQL 
based)
   New admin pages were also added for the maintenance of users/passwords. 
Please
   check the docs for a more detailed description of this new feature.

-Multi-Level Fallbacks-

   Multi-level fallbacks allow for specifications of a series of fallback 
mounts
   that you could use, for instance, to set up a series of progressively lower
   bitrate streams that would be cascaded through.  For instance, a modem user
   would connect to the highest bitrate stream, and then could be cascaded
   down to a progressively lower stream until they reach a value they can
   handle.

-Burst-On-Connect-

   This is an new, optional config setting which will send a initial burst of
   data to connecting listeners.  This has the effect of reducing
   (significantly) the startup buffer latency from the end-user perspective.
   This option is enabled by default.


****New Enhancements for 2.1****

-Update to admin interface-

   This interface has been cleaned up quite a bit and made a bit nicer.

-Rewrite of the YP listing code-

   The icecast yp code has received a complete overhaul by karl, and it's a 
much
   more stable and failure-resistant implementation.

-Lots and lots of bugs fixed-

   Check the ChangeLog for a complete list of these...

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