barely connected in the digital world

There is something severely wrong with our broadband connection.  In a way that is the good news, since initially we thought it was my computer, until the Systems Administrator’s computer began to show the same symptoms.  It seems unlikely that some bot so well hidden it has slipped past all virus checks has infected both laptops, so we are back to our internet connection, either the line or the modem, as the chief suspect.

Broadband here has never been very good.  We are a long way from the exchange, by the winding route that the copper cable takes, and various trees lean on it en route.  There was a proposal a few years ago from a rival to BT to build a wireless broadband network in this area.  Our house would have been in direct line of sight of the transmitter, and we were all for it.  At the last minute BT announced an upgrade to their service, still not to anything very good, but just enough to kill the wireless idea.  Last summer our broadband capacity rose for several months, and the SA became quite excited and started talking about being able to stream films, but then it crashed back again.  BT must have stuck another fifty houses on the end of the line.  Now there are plans to upgrade the service to various villages in the Tendring peninsular, but ours isn’t on the list of lucky places that are going to get a decent signal.

My current laptop has never been very good, which is a pity.  The technical description sounded as though it ought to be just right for my purposes.  I don’t need huge capacity to handle graphics as I don’t play computer games.  I just want to browse the net, use e-mails, and do a bit of typing and very low-level spreadsheeting.  That shouldn’t be too hard.  Even a mid range laptop should be able to do that in its sleep with one hand tied behind its back.  Mine has always been on the slow side navigating around the web.  The SA has spent a long time adjusting the settings and clearing its caches.  I have obediently tried to follow a shifting set of instructions about closing it, not closing it, restarting it, not running too many applications at once and so on.  Its performance has remained erratic.

This morning it fell back to a level that would have been poor in the days of dial-up.  The CPU was very, very busy, and little lights on the keyboard showed that it was contacting the internet.  It just wouldn’t let me on-line.  The SA began to mutter that it was really not right, and there must be something in there, even though all home tests had come back clean.  I steeled myself to take it for a professional inspection.  It isn’t a nice thought, contemplating handing your laptop over to a stranger.  I don’t store any passwords, but it has all sorts of data on it, and I have some on-line accounts.  I don’t know any professional laptop doctors, and don’t know how to find a reputable one.  Go to the little shop next to the village store, and assume that since they’ve been there for a few years they must be honest?  We agreed that the SA would take it in tomorrow on the way to Tesco.

By lunchtime the SA’s laptop was doing all the things that mine often does, crashing out of sites, churning away but without accessing the page the SA had asked for, and temporarily losing the internet connection.  By mid afternoon both machines were behaving perfectly well on-line.  The SA’s latest theory is that something, the line or the modem, is causing frequent micro-interruptions to our connection, and that my machine for whatever reason doesn’t cope with this at all well.  That could explain why it seems to keep going into full start-up mode in the middle of a session.  It’s a theory.  The visit to the little shop in the village has been put on hold, for now.

I have to smile grimly when I hear politicians chunter on about how the UK needs to be a knowledge based economy, small businesses are what will create jobs and lead us out of recession, and all that stuff.  If I were trying to run a small business from here I would be tearing my hair out.  We live sixty miles from London and six miles from Colchester (the UK’s fastest growing town, apparently) and we don’t have a decent internet connection.  Never have had.  That’s one reason why I don’t leave things like my on-line tax return until the last minute (though we do have a 3G dongle for emergencies).

Of course it could be our modem.  If that is what’s causing the temporary loss of signal then I owe BT an apology.  Only a small one, though, because we get a pretty pathetic amount of capacity at the best of times.