[Icecast] Persistent audio streams?

[Jeff Simmons]

My apologies if this is a stupid question, or has been covered in detail 
somewhere that I haven't found yet. I have spent a while looking around. I'm 
new to streaming audio, but I do know a thing or two about TCP/IP networking.

I'm working with a local public radio station. They have a remote transmitter 
located about a hundred miles away, to serve another community. Right now 
they're using a radio broadcast to get feed to that transmitter, but, well, 
basically, the quality and reliability suck.

I've been experimenting with running an internet audio stream to the remote 
site. Our ISP has a direct route from the local studio to the remote 
transmitter (over their backbone and then to the remote via high speed 
wireless, about 5 hops). I've set up ice2 and icecast, and I'm getting a very 
nice Ogg Vorbis stream off their line output before it goes to the local 
transmitter.

I've been monitoring the stream from my place (via 3m/384k ASDL, about 16 
hops). My problem is that the various clients I've tried (WinAmp, XMMS, 
Foobar) all ending up dropping the stream eventually. I have yet to get a 
stream that was still going after 24 hours.

I know that people are running internet radio stations and streaming content 
from various places to redistributors, and they must be getting better 
persistence than I am.

So what do I need to know to ensure that a stream will be up 24/7/365?

Thanks in advance for any help or pointers you can give me.

-- 
Jeff Simmons                                   jsimmons at goblin.punk.net
     Simmons Consulting - Network Engineering, Administration, Security

"You guys, I don't hear any noise. Are you sure you're doing it right?"
	-- My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult