Well, I'm annoyed. That pretty much sums it up. If you're on OldTownHome.com and are reading this post, there's a good chance you're annoyed too, primarily at the slower than a tortoise speed (or lack thereof) of this website. You see, we're having Internet issues. Or more specifically, Internet speed and packet loss issues.

If you'll recall about a month ago I mentioned the wires, wires, everywhere and how we ultimately needed to do some work to make our Internet connection better. We're signed up for 27 Mbps / 7 Mbps business service with our local provider, but we've been seeing fairly slow upload speeds and moderate to significant packet loss. This equates to this website running very slowly, since we host in a very DIY fashion. 

We had hoped having our provider replace the drop from the tap on the pole to our house would help alleviate the issues we were seeing, but the new wire seemed to be doing little to boost the quality of connection. In fact, I feel like it has kept getting worse.

I called them last week to get a tech back out to the house, as it seemed our cable modem was starting to experience a fair amount of packet loss and signal issues. They gave us the good old, "Oh yeah, this modem is really old, that's probably the root cause of this." I didn't buy the excuse, but it's part of the "variable elimination" process of establishing the primary issue with the connection.

I'm not sure you're aware of how tech troubleshooting works, but as a software developer and having lived the life of a network admin, let me give you a little insight into the mindset of most tech people. I've learned this over the years and strive to "not be that guy."  The following is the basic undertone of any given conversation.

Standard tech support conversation:  

Tech Guy: Oh hi noob that doesn't understand the technology you're using, what seems to be the problem?

Customer: Well, I've been noticing that some data bits were flexing improperly through the collectimizer while I was downloading the latest payload. 

(The fact is, it doesn't matter what you say, if you know what you're talking about, or if you're completely without knowledge on the subject, the tech person is just listening for a few key words from your explanation, hoping to tell you that the issue you're having is somehow your own fault, primarily because you are stupid.)

Tech Guy: Ok, let me take a look here. Yeah, it's probably an issue with you and how you've set this up. There's no way it could possibly be something wrong with the massive system we own but I have basically no overall knowledge of, instead, I'm going to blame it on something that is not my responsibility so I have less work to do overall.

Customer: But I went through all of these steps and eliminated all of these variables, perhaps you could look again? 

Tech Guy: Ok, fine. I'll throw you a bone and replace the thing that requires the least amount of effort on my end, hope it works out, and I'll try to leave as quickly as possible before really checking that my work has made any real impact.

This shows the sad state of technology today. Those in the know somehow feel it qualifies them as the illuminati, and their knowledge now trumps all others' knowledge.

Anyhow, back to my experience. 

The tech showed up for his appointment a little early on Friday and started the process to swap the modem. I made the comment about how great their business service is and how they're always on time. Little did I know that this innocent compliment would be the bane of my weekend. The tech on Friday swapped out modem after modem, three in total, trying to get them to work properly. 

Now, I'm not a cable expert, but I'm thinking it's not the modem that's the issue? Perhaps it's actually something on the line, something in the configuration, something that is not a quick and easy fix? 

They completed the modem swap on Friday, and the tech left as speeds were momentarily improved. I suggested that a previous tech recommended changing the tap from the pole out front to the pole at the back of our house, and he said "Well, if you're direct connected to the tap, it doesn't matter, so that won't do a thing." That raised a red flag in my eyes because cable is most definitely dependent on the number of people connected to the tap and using it at once. 

Shortly after the tech left on Friday I noticed continued degradation of quality. I called them back on Saturday to let them know of the continued issues and they scheduled me for an appointment on Sunday morning, from 8:00am-10:00am. This would work perfectly. I'd be able to be home, wouldn't need to take time off of work to deal with this issue, and would hopefully be one of the first appointments on Sunday, so no need to worry about waiting around all day.

On Sunday morning I woke up early, got everything ready, and awaited the support arrival.

8:00am...8:30am...9:15am...10:00am...10:15am... no tech. I call again to see when I should expect the elusive technology hero and am told I'll receive a call by 10:55am with an ETA.

10:45am...10:55am...11:10am... still nothing. I call again and this time I'm told "We've already escalated this once, so I'm going to do it again. You should hear back from regional dispatch in an hour, but if you don't hear back in an hour, they're probably not coming. I mean, we've exhausted our abilities on this end." This is exactly what I was told on the phone. I was floored.

An hour later, no tech, no call, no nothing. I later tweeted to customer support and heard back. They wanted my account number so I sent it along, as well as my contact phone. By this point it was already late afternoon. I was encouraged when I received a message back on Twitter letting me know that they were looking into it and would get back in touch with me. However, my high hopes were soon dashed when I didn't hear back, either by phone or by twitter, for the remainder of the night.

I decided to take matters into my own hands, continuing to eliminate possible variables in our install. I ran a new wire from the box outside directly to our cable modem, no splits or old cable issues to worry about. 

Then I directly connected to the cable modem from my laptop to eliminate any possible internal network issues. Sadly, same issue. We're signed up for a 27 Mbps / 7 Mbps service, but we were seeing more of a 24 / 0.52 split with significant packet loss.  

My frustration at the situation continued throughout the night. The laptop connection to the Internet struggled along with pages loading at a simply excruciating rate, each second of delay compounding my overall frustration with the entire situation. I tried to put it behind me and started this week as a new day. On the bus, on the way into work, I didn't even think about the issues I had. Out of the blue, I received a phone call on my cell phone. When I answered the annoyed voice on the other end of the line said: 

Caller: "Good morning. I'm (insert caller's name). I wanted to let you know there's a tech standing outside of your door right now..." 

Me: "I don't have an appointment today."

Caller: "Sure you do."

Me: "I had an appointment yesterday from 8:00am-10:00am, but that was missed without a call. I also called twice for an ETA yesterday, both of those calls were not returned. I do not have an appointment today, so I'm not going to be there. I also do not have availability until Wednesday, which is when I'd like you to schedule me an 8:00am appointment. Thank you."

Caller: "Ok...(pause)...ok, I'll put you down for 8:00am-12:00pm on Wednesday."

Me: "Make it 8:00am-10:00am please."

Caller: "Ok...(long pause)...ok, I've made that change."

Me: "Thank you, have a good day."

The saga continues. We'll see where this one goes. In the meantime, please accept our sincere apologies for the excrutiatingly slow load time. We promise we're working on it.

6/19/2013 Update:

After a few more calls we had a tech look into our connection and it seems some adjustments were made and we're back in the game of high speed internet. I can't tell you how relieved I am. Here's our latest speed test.

I'll have to keep my eye on it in the evenings and on weekends. There's a good chance the real issue is actually congestion on the node we connect to, but only time will tell.