[117974] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott Morris)
Wed Oct 7 14:23:10 2009
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:22:31 -0400
From: Scott Morris <swm@emanon.com>
To: Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net>
In-Reply-To: <200910071448.n97EmU9t080849@aurora.sol.net>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Reply-To: swm@emanon.com
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I may be having my wires a little crossed (I'm not an electrical
engineer) but I was always under the impression that manipulation of the
physical characteristics like that from heat/dampness didn't reduce the
"speed" but the "quality" (like line noise/errors/etc) of the line.
Whether old telco lines or newer data lines it's all about electrical
signal and bit error rates. More errors = more retransmissions = slower
perceived throughput.
Just my thinking.
Scott
Joe Greco wrote:
>> http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-10/ts_burningquestion
>>
>
> It used to be that we would notice this, except that it had everything to
> do with temperature *and* dampness. In the '90's, it was still quite
> common for a lot of older outside plant to be really only "voice grade"
> and it wasn't unusual for copper to run all the way back to the CO,
> through a variety of taps and splice points. Even though Ma Bell would
> typically do a careful job handling their copper, the sheer number of
> potential points of failure meant that it wasn't unusual for water to
> infiltrate and penetrate. If I recall correctly, the worst was usually
> a long, hard cold rain (hey we're in Wisconsin) after which people who
> had been getting solidly high speed modem connects would see a somewhat
> slower speed.
>
> ... JG
>
