I was really doubting the reality of what I was wittering to Ofcom about. 'He's just obsessive' I could hear you saying. With an undercurrent of 'Why doesn't the sad twat get a life and stop bothering us with all this crap?' (mostly from the back row - you know who you are). But these monitoring gubbins are beginning to pay off. I'm not imagining things.
I set up a monitoring sensor to time the download of a 100KB picture from a Google site once every 60 seconds. This isn't a perfect measure, but there are no sensors to do the same with a file on the NAS (and no, file:// doesn't work with the sensor, before the techheads start making suggestions). Setting up a webserver on another machine just brings another bit of kit into the equation). Google's infrastructure should be pretty performant, the DSL connection is very stable - as indicators go it will do.
I also set up some sensors to ping the devices around the network - essentially a measure of whether this wirelessly connected laptop can even start a conversation with them and how long it takes them to say hello back. If the timing of the web download goes awry - well that could be Google or the ADSL. But not if the laptop suddenly can't have a sensible wireless chat with the router at the same time - that almost certainly has to be a sudden problem with the wireless transmission.
If Les had been here for most of tonight he'd probably not have seen anything - perhaps a couple of small blips, but it's been pretty good. But I'd really liked him to have been here in the run up to midnight...
This is the download of the image from the Google site, over a 2 hour period:
I set up a monitoring sensor to time the download of a 100KB picture from a Google site once every 60 seconds. This isn't a perfect measure, but there are no sensors to do the same with a file on the NAS (and no, file:// doesn't work with the sensor, before the techheads start making suggestions). Setting up a webserver on another machine just brings another bit of kit into the equation). Google's infrastructure should be pretty performant, the DSL connection is very stable - as indicators go it will do.
I also set up some sensors to ping the devices around the network - essentially a measure of whether this wirelessly connected laptop can even start a conversation with them and how long it takes them to say hello back. If the timing of the web download goes awry - well that could be Google or the ADSL. But not if the laptop suddenly can't have a sensible wireless chat with the router at the same time - that almost certainly has to be a sudden problem with the wireless transmission.
If Les had been here for most of tonight he'd probably not have seen anything - perhaps a couple of small blips, but it's been pretty good. But I'd really liked him to have been here in the run up to midnight...
This is the download of the image from the Google site, over a 2 hour period:
And this is ping to the router over the same period:
At the same time as the download time goes through the roof, communication to the router pretty much gets lost (that's what the red dots are in the lower trace. Pings to the other bits of kit on the LAN are pretty much the same. The only thing common to both of these are the router and the wireless connection. Yes, it could be the router - but I can't see what would cause a good router to go into a tizzy like this for 10 minutes. More to the point, I've been seeing behaviour like this for 10 months, during which period I've had three different routers in the attic in my desperation to eliminate possible causes.
So I don't think I am going insane after all. Which is a relief. People with proper qualifications, Cisco and everything, please feel free to point out flaws in my thinking: It all helps and I am a total amateur in this stuff, floundering around in the wrong end of the IT pool...
So I don't think I am going insane after all. Which is a relief. People with proper qualifications, Cisco and everything, please feel free to point out flaws in my thinking: It all helps and I am a total amateur in this stuff, floundering around in the wrong end of the IT pool...
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