Panic attack

Looks like my broadband connection is playing up.

It's been doing it for a couple of days now.

Coincidentally with the temporary lodgers and their computers moving in.

Three of us in one house, not being able to surf.

Panic broke out for the two of us who don't really understand this technology. The other of our number is, thankfully, a network engineer and so displaced his panic by diagnoosing the problem.


Fortunately, this house was long ago "wired": "the boy" having been no slouch in the geek department, himself.

In the electricity meter cupboard there was already a switch and patching sockets. In my workroom, there's a wireless router that takes the internet to the rest of the house by means of said switch.

Sadly, after the network engineer moved in, it soon became clear that the switch was rather beyond EoL (end of life)...it having failed.

So new switch bought, duly installed by network engineer; a couple of other minor niggles fixed and all should have been well. Unfortunately, around about this time the internet connection started playing up and the two non techies in the house started to complain.

Network engineer proceeded to do all manner of signal testing, analysis, diagnosis and more testing. It bothered him that the problem was intermittant and seemed to coincide with his arrival.

Nevertheless the final diagnosis was that it was a problem with the broadband provider.

Today all seemed well, initially but now once again the connection is playing up.

Now there's just me in the house.

As a last ditch proof I have eliminated the whole of the household LAN and connected directly to the cable modem.

Verdict? Well - initially had awful trouble making a connection...but just at the moment it's OK. I think...I think that the network engineer's diagnosis is correct...that it's an intermittant failure in the broadband line.

But how pathetic is this? I'm panicking that I'm losing my connection to the outside world. There are some people I only keep in contact with via the internet and I'm worried I'll lose contact. I'm sitting here, typing and already starting to feel potentially isolated.

It surprises me greatly just how reliant I've become on the connection. A while ago a friend had a similar broadband connectivity failure and they used the expression "frantic" to describe their discomfiture. At the time I thought that was a gross overreaction.

Now I'm not so sure.

I do hope this is fixed soon...

...please...


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