Last night, I found myself complainging - LOUDLY - about how slow my web queries were taking to complete. Like many Americans, I use my cable company's Internet Service package, because they bundle the cost of Internet with my cable and HD services, and because on paper I get 5 megabit download speeds. Unlike many American's, I am CTO for an internet circuits company (http://justcircuits.com) and I have a significant interest in a telecommunications company (http://freedomstarr.net), so I have some really good tools to know when I am not receiving my full speed as contracted.
But I am a reasonable person, so I tried to determine why I was having a problem. Indications are that there are a number of severe outages in the Internet infrastructure, notably in Texas and a few other Level 1 nodes, but fail-over should have those back up in a hurry. More of note, my local company brags about a really large recent investment in fibre optics, but I can't help but notice that while the cables between distribution points have improved, the drop into my home has not - in fact, I am still sharing the drop) with the people upstairs - that's 7 televisions and 3 computers all sharing one loop. I wonder why my connection is working at all.
The thing that is depressing