Monday, August 18, 2008

Internet overload?

It seems to us that since the Olympics started, access to the Internet has become an iffy proposition.

We will have all the lights green on our DSL modem one minute, and then the Internet light goes off or even turns red. When this happens, the DSL blinks green.

This can happen every few minutes and be OK for a few minutes. It can be OK for hours and be off for many minutes or even hours.

Saturday night we had iffy access; two minutes on, one minute off. Sunday night we had almost continuous access. This morning we had access, then didn't, then did, and now we haven't had access for over an hour.

I wondered about our having an Apple Time Capsule added to our home network. I also wondered if our modem was going bad. Pushing reset or pulling the plug seems to make no difference: if it was working, it still works; if it wasn't working, it still won't work.

I also wondered about our phone company having problems. I talked to a friend who lives about a mile away about this. He has cable and has also been having spotty access.

It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation to these problems with access peaks to either NBCOlympics.com or YouTube.

A final irony. I went to Qwest's home page and eventually to a discussion group. Just as I was registering to join the group, access disappeared!

No, one more irony. The phone rang downstairs and I tried to answer upstairs on the headset. Nothing! I tried the wall phone. Nothing. When I tried downstairs, I got a dial tone (the caller never left a message). I checked the wall jack upstairs. It was out for enough that a light kick would pull it out. Have I been kicking the jack all along or pushing a wastebasket against it? However, why did the red internet light come on and go off? We shall see this evening when local web traffic goes up.