Latency and its discontents

It’s been an odd summer. I know I haven’t done much with this blog for quite a few months now. My theoretical goal is to write something often enough to retain the ability to string more than two sentences together in a coherent thought, but it hasn’t been happening. No book reviews, no descriptions of national parks or forests visited, no nattering on about politics or current affairs, not even much about the fun and frustrations of volunteering at the county historical society’s museum. Nada. Zilch. Blank pages for weeks on end.

Why is a mystery. Sort of. I have had a mild case of ennui, but not enough to prevent me from doing other stuff. So I’m going to blame technology. We’ve been experiencing major Internet connection woes since returning from Arizona in April. It hadn’t been the world’s greatest service for awhile, but it got a lot worse this Spring. Pages refused to load – we kept getting the “aw, snap” message on Chrome saying a site was taking too long to respond – and connections would vanish before our eyes. I’d be on Facebook scrolling down to read my news feed, the device would do the electronic equivalent of blinking, and whichever browser I was in (Edge or Chrome) would shut down. The Intertubes weren’t just being slow. They were gone. I’d go from being in the middle of reading an article to staring at the icons on the desktop. When I reopened the browser I’d be treated to the “Chrome did not shut down properly. Would you like to restore?” message. Well, no shit it didn’t shut down properly. It totally closed without any human hands asking it to close, just a lousy Internet connection.

At first when weird stuff happened, I thought the problem was my notebook. It was cheap and I thought maybe it was simply dying. Then the S.O. got a new laptop (his old one gave up the ghost during the winter) and he had problems, too. So did  the  museum's smart phone when I happened to have it at home. Ergo, it wasn't my notebook. It was the ISP. Just to be sure, I took my notebook to a couple different locations where there was good public wifi. No issues whatsoever, no odd glitchy things happening.  The problems were worse with the notebook than with the S.O.'s laptop, but I figure it's because the notebook is the Microsoft version of a Chrome book. It's designed to sync with the cloud more or less continuously, and if access to the cloud vanishes the notebook gets more than a tad  erratic. 

By the time I  confirmed that it was not just the notebook's problem, we had already spent several frustrating months trying to get our service provider (Baraga Telephone, aka UP.net, which I’m figuring out is just another way of spelling Comcast because they’ve surely got the same model of customer service) to recognize that there was (and still is) a problem. The S.O. would call and complain. Whoever was on the other end always either sounded skeptical (“What do you mean you have a problem? Our readings don’t show a problem”) or lied (“I’ll put in a work order. Someone will call you back/come up to check things out/contact you soon."). No one called back, no one came up until I went ambling in to Baraga Tel’s office and complained in person. I brought my notebook along so I could show them screen shots of the weirdness that had been happening. And, yes, then they treated the complaints seriously but it shouldn’t have taken me standing in the lobby being an obnoxious old lady to get them to listen.

At about the same time, the S.O. discovered and installed an app that measures the data flow in both directions. What most people don’t realize because the Internet tends to get talked about using pipe analogies, like the flow of water through a hose, is that the data flow is a two-way thing. It doesn’t matter how fast data is reaching us if then it can’t bounce back quickly. The communication back to the server is called latency and is measured in milliseconds. The longer it takes to get back to the server, the worse your Internet service is going to be. Normal latency for DSL (which is what we have) is something like 40 to 50 milliseconds. The graph for latency should look like a fairly smooth line, definite ups and downs but nothing dramatic, you now, minor variations from maybe somewhere around 40 to up around 50 and then down again, but no huge spikes.

Well, we get spikes. We get dramatic spikes. The S.O. has been tracking those spikes. We’ve had some hit over 2,000. We also get bright red lines that last for anywhere from a blip to several minutes. The bright red line means no Internet service whatsoever. 

We did succeed in getting Baraga Telephone to come up and check things out. The first time they were up, they discovered the neighbor’s line had a section that lightning had fried. So they fixed it – I told the S.O. that the next time he sees Tom to tell him he can thank us for his improved service – but they didn’t find anything on our line. They did, however, concede there is a problem. So they came up again. This time the lineman found a short section on our line that had gotten fried. He came back to the house and was so proud of himself for replacing that piece. He was sure he’d cured the problem. Nope.

So where do things stand now? The lineman said the wires coming our way are old and of a type that is now considered obsolete. They should be replaced. Will they be replaced? If they are, that would no doubt fix our problem. Does Baraga Telephone management care enough about keeping three customers happy (the number of households on our road that use UP.net) to replace a mile of not-cheap wire? I doubt it.

The S.O. and I have been contemplating being snowbirds again this coming winter. We’re still debating whether to apply to be volunteers at a national park or elsewhere for at least part of the winter, but it’s looking more and more like the Guppy will be in warmer climes when snow falls up here. If we do spend the winter away, we’ll devote a good part of it exploring alternatives to the Internet service we have now. Either that, or we’ll spend enough time in locations where there is neither cell nor Internet service for us to figure out that it’s possible to live without it.

Minor digression, but yet another mystery: why did the font change for the last two paragraphs (this one and the one above) when I never went into HTML to change the code?  It really is magic. 

Another exercise in frustration

AKA Cyberspace Mysteries.

Since moving back up here to the tundra and deciding to live in the middle of nowhere, the only way the S.O. and I get to watch television is via streaming. Most networks now let you watch their prime time shows after a delay of anywhere from 1 to 30 days after an episode originally aired, which means we see stuff like "Survivor" a day later than every one else. We don't actually have too many problems finding what we want with one notable exception: sports.

It doesn't matter what sport it is, no one wants to watch an event after the outcome is already known. The S.O. has become quite adept at finding sites for watching NASCAR or football, although the quality of the streams can vary quite a bit. Once in a while he gets lucky and the network carrying the game or the race will live stream the event free. Doesn't matter if it's a sketchy site that's pirating the broadcast or the actual network, though. If it's a live stream, things inevitably get weird. The only way to describe it is to say the stream hiccoughs. It skips. It's like data packets drop out when the buffering slows down. Weirdness ensues. There'll be a hiccough and a race skips right over a couple of laps. Color commentators get cut off in mid-sentence. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's annoying. And last night?

I'm not sure if it was a kindness or an irritant, but the football game went from "We're in overtime. Kickoff in a minute" to a screen saying "Commercial break" to hearing an announcer say "and the Cardinals move on in the playoffs with a final score of 26." The S.O. went from hoping for an overtime miracle to sitting there dumbfounded muttering what the hell?? I'm not sure just how many minutes overtime actually took up, but the S.O. saw none of it. It felt kind of like when you're listening to an LP on vinyl, someone bumps into the record player, and you go from track 1 to track 3 with nothing in between. Very, very strange.

That whole thing with live streaming can be weird. We watch the local news as a live stream, but it can be odd. Sometimes there are commercial breaks; sometimes the stream starts a couple minutes later than it would if we were actually watching it as an over the air broadcast and the stream just runs straight through, no commercials at all. It's definitely a mystery.

Every so often someone suggests we spent money on DISH. I don't think so. With the live stream, there's the problem of hiccoughs. If we had DISH, right about the time things got interesting, the dish would fill with snow and the S.O. would miss key plays because he'd be outside with a broom. Either way, he ends up cursing -- and right now the cursing is free.