Tag: dsl

The Art of Internet Connectivity

Everyone’s internet connectivity experience is unique and it can vary from minute to minute. Most internet users can sense slowdowns, and everyone can identify when a connection fails. Web developers absolutely rely on a web connection to build web pages. So, when our internet connection goes down our productivity comes to a halt.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve reported to various tech support organizations that I wasn’t able to reach a particular website or web service and was told by the tech: “I was able to reach it just fine.” This happened again today when I called my DSL provider to inform them our internet service went down completely and then was degraded to 1/10 of what we were paying for (e.g. ~1.12 Mbps on a 12 Mbps service). They told me that the line was stable. Although I’m not real sure what stable means. Then the speed gradually increased back up to normal of over the next hour and a half. This has happened about a half dozen times over the last three months. 

As a web developer, you load web pages up to several hundred times per day. I almost always have monitoring tools hooked up that give the exact time to download a page and its associated elements. So, I have a good idea of when the internet is performing well, and when it isn’t.  Because of this I’ve become sensitized to small, millisecond changes in download times.

I also gained extensive knowledge of internet connections when working on high availability systems with up to five-nines uptime. We deployed systems that monitored web traffic all over the U.S. 24×7. I was amazed to see that internet traffic was very much like our roadways. Sometimes traffic is moving fast, other times it’s slow in spots, and sometimes it’s completely stopped or even re-routed.

In many cases, a modem (or router, as I’m using the terms interchangeably) simply locked up. This is quite common as these devices often run a small linux-based operating system that can occasionally flake out. I can say with certainty in the cases where my DSL modem/wireless router didn’t die, and there was no internet connection, then in 9 out of 10 of these cases it was a problem upstream with the carrier.

Guidelines. So, here are some guidelines for helping you narrow down where the problem might be:

– Check the modem connectivity lights. Usually if a modem is connected to the internet, the connectivity light will be a steady or flickering green. Red  or no connectivity light almost always means no connection. It should be a matter of reflex to simply restart the modem and see if that fixes the problem.

– If the internet connectivity light doesn’t come back after restarting the modem, then call tech support.

– On rare occasions (1 out of 10), restarting the server plus the modem restored connectivity.

– Still no service? You can go get a cup of coffee then come back later and recheck.

– Or, if the internet connection light is green, try blowing away the browser cache and try to reload? Sometimes old versions of pages can stick in the cache.

– Can you load any other websites? If you can, then your particular server or service is most likely down.

– Can you ping the server? (for servers that allow ping). Determines if the server has basic connectivity.

– Can you run a tracert? Let’s you look at the connectivity between you and the remote server.

– Document the problems so you have a record for future reference.

– If you need continuous monitoring with alert thresholds, then look into evaluating continuous monitoring tools such as Paessler.

– If you know how to get the basic troubleshooting out of the way, or if you’ve already done it, then insist on escalation when you call tech support. You need to get back to coding as fast as possible.

From 56K Baud to FiOS – how far have really come?

While searching for a connector in some boxes of long forgotten electronics detritus, I came across a 56K PC Card modem from 3Com. I immediately grabbed the card and thumbed it over in my hands and wondered how far have we really come since then? For those of you that never had dial-up access to the internet, this was the hottest ticket back in the ancient days of 1999. 56K was smoking back then! My conclusion: we’ve come far, but we also have taken many steps backwards. We have, in many respects, become victims of our own success.

Let me explain. Yes, first let me acknowledge that there are companies like Verizon that sell FiOS with download speeds of 15Mb/second or greater depending on how much money you want to pay. And, there are plenty of DSL and Cable internet vendors that offer 3MB/second (or more) download speeds. Oh, and I can’t forget the promise of 4G cell phone speeds.

But, reality is a far, far different animal than promises. There are plenty of times when you may not get anywhere near the download speeds promised due to a variety of technical issues. In my experience, it’s actually rare that I get to benefit the full capabilities of the cutting edge, 21st Century internet technology at my disposal. For example, if you have a 15Mb/second FiOS connection it doesn’t guarantee that every website you go to will download at 15Mb/second everytime. That’s a fact.

On any given day, we are all dependent on many factors that affect internet download speeds. The list is huge and is by no means limited to the following. Let me roughly say that all these items affect how fast something will download:

  • Number of users hitting a particular website
  • That websites hardware and bandwidth capabilities
  • General internet backbone traffic
  • Your own internet/cable modem
  • General packet collisions/losses/overhead
  • The wire or wireless connection you are using
  • Your own network card or wireless card on your computer.
  • Background processes running on your computer
  • Cell phone tower signal strength and number of users
  • And so, so many more…

I could go on for several pages, but you get the idea. Since I’m a web application developer, I have to pay attention to how fast pages load. And I often monitor and test internet connections to try and figure out where the performance problems are. Perhaps, this makes me more sensitive and less patient when I don’t receive the full benefit of the connection to the internet when it’s offered to me at my home, at work, or when traveling and using a conference or hotel wireless connection.

This is the internet age right? I have come to expect instantaneous downloads and hiccup free streaming video, but it’s very rare that I can watch a YouTube video without it stuttering and pausing to re-buffer every 15 seconds. Or, how many of you have continuously fast access to the internet via your AT&T iPhone? If you never have any problems you’re either lucky and live in a less congested area, or you aren’t a power user and are okay with downloads occasionally taking longer than expected.

There’s an immutable law that we always forget about it and it says “bandwidth is finite”.  We are very capable of building applications that consume more and more bandwidth every day.  There are millions of videos added to the interent every hour and ever larger files being downloaded. And, as tens of millions of more people buy smarthpones, they too are continuously consuming internet bandwidth 24 hours a day. And, so on and so forth the argument goes on.

In conclusion, as web developers we can do our part for improving people’s internet experience by optimize your web applications as much as possible. Make your web applications file sizes as small as possible, use lazy loading, run code optimizers, consider binary formats for moving large data back and forth, and optimize images were possible. In the end, we will all benefit from a better internet experience.