Here Goes The Damned Broadband Again. ‘Dad, The Red Light Is Flashing And I Can’t Watch My Film!’
So you have your broadband connection from your new provider. Great, they are better than the last provider I hope? But there are things you do not get told about broadband outages. And your kids are going mad and to the detriment of home-workers alike.
Maybe a topic that people both love and hate, but broadband has been around for some time now and proves itself when it comes to efficiency.
The author clears his throat (well we hope it does anyway!)
As ‘Clear Business’ told us within their Q&A published on 18th December 2019, ‘broadband is an essential service that has become part of everyday home and business life.’
It’s easy to forget that around 20 years ago, few had access to the internet, as it is embedded in so much of what we do. The arrival of Broadband changed how we communicate with each other and has improved how small businesses operate…
…broadband is the connection from the socket to the network which allows you to connect to the internet.
I have previously published the concerns on the failures of the Internet Services Provider below which may provide some interest, but I would like to tell you some more about what can make its signal strength drop out.
The birth of broadband happened in the UK, quite aptly, at the turn of the new millennium in 2000. This was when the first UK resident got connected to an ADSL line for a blistering fast 512Kb…
‘When was broadband invented?’ 2nd July 2020
The picture (inset left) shows a typical scene you have most likely come across in your area, where cable companies are laying underground cables for fiber-optic for broadband services.
There are three types of broadband (currently)
(A) Asymmetric (asynchronous) Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) which operates through copper wires on the existing Openreach network. This is typically used for accessing social media, sending & receiving emails, and file downloading.
(B) Fibre-optic which uses plastic or glass cables rather than the standard copper wires as earlier used for ADSL. This enables you the benefit of accessing high speeds allowing for fewer interruptions when gaming, streaming, and downloading video or audio, or for sharing files
(C)Satellite this alternative can provide you with excellent accessibility to the network, where cabling (such as A and B) would be almost an impossible geographical task, such as in remote and rural areas.
There are many people throughout the world where cabling is simply not a viable action.
Can you imagine the devastation to this area (inset left) should they be invaded by ground diggers and trenches being laid?
Broadband, whereas it does have many benefits to us, does have its downtime though… and this can prove to be extremely irritating for families (in my case, my daughter) and detrimental to home workers with repercussions in productivity.
Cast your minds back to the recent crisis with the Covid-19 pandemic, there were many non-essential workers required to work from home. With an interrupted broadband, they would be unable to link from home to their regular office.
This is what you hope to see on your internet (inset left) a signal heralding strength of wi-fi & a good signal.
But what when this does not happen?
Outages with your signal can occur for many reasons:
- Internet traffic where at busier times of the day, many people being on the internet simply overload the bandwidth of the service.
- Operator Error. Typically plugging wires into the wrong connection port, and setting confusing firewall rules
- Typically an actual physically broken link
- Your internet provider experiencing fluctuations in the speed of upload/download times (remember the original slowness of your internet when we were all using Dial-up?)
This meant a 3.5Mb song, in real-world terms, would take about half an hour to download! Have any of us in our busy lives today, got threat sort of time to waste?
Google was having to protect what was left of the internet’s backbone from shark attacks. Unlike so many things named by the architects of the internet, “shark attack” is not just a catchy name for something dull: it is literally sharks attacking the undersea cables that connect the world.
Showing a remarkable fact the sharks were nibbling their way into18% of undersea cables!
Although it was quickly followed up by Google reinforcing their undersea network.
The fibre optic cables, which carry internet traffic around the world, are protected by a series of layers to protect against impact and from movement that could break the glass fibres. Showing underwater surveillance video of a shark biting a cable, a cloud product manager said that Google is working with partner companies on cables across the Pacific to reinforce them with a Kevlar-like matting to prevent damage.
Brownouts
These can occur when the voltage drops below the usual mains supply level. It is a short-term drop in voltage, lasting for just a few minutes, or even several hours and days. They tend to be caused by a sudden increased demand for power, or during extreme weather conditions which then put sudden additional strains on the electrical grids. They can be initiated intentionally too. For example, when the national grid deliberately instates a reduction in voltages; when it is necessary to allocate reserves of electricity to prevent a possible blackout from occurring.
Power cuts and blackouts can be caused by a lot of different things. We’re really not used to them in UK, we like our power reliable and our lights firmly, you know, lit.
The Green-age, 16th August 2019.
Blackouts
These are when your electrical supply to a large area is actually damaged, and you completely lose your power supply. And apart from the fear to people that can be brought about by blackouts, they are a very hard hit on those that rely on the internet for their business productivity.
Lightening, rain, ice, wind, snow, floods, and storms can all lead to problems with energy generation and power lines. Gale force winds might mean that our wind turbines are generating more energy, but it can also cause power lines to fall and powercuts still to occur. The power lines really are the most vulnerable point in the National Grid system.
The Green-age, 16th August 2019.
In these incidences, there are things you can do to allay potential upcoming damages. Take for example the United Kingdoms' (UK) healthcare system. They rely on large generators to keep their supply of electricity going so that the lives they care for are not jeopardized in any way. These portable power generators feed the hospitals with the power required to keep life-support equipment & health monitoring systems to work uninterrupted.
If you are a business that also relies upon the electricity grid network, or you are a home-worker then, you are able to purchase a portable generator specifically to aid you in times such as this.
These can easily and readily be purchased through ‘SCREWFIX,’ ranging in price from £119.99 to £4,999.99.
So they are not the cheapest items you could be out buying!
I don’t suggest that you suddenly all rush out to buy one of these generators, simply because your own child has shouted down the stairs from their bedroom when they are on their favorite social network site,
Mum! Dad! The red light is flashing and I can’t watch my film!’
or,
Why has power to my broadband stopped, now I can’t chat with my friend!
But it can certainly provide you with the temporary means of power supply restoration to your home, should you be relying on it if you are a home-worker or simply running your work permanently from your home office.
Certainly, to every writer who uses Medium, you will know exactly how disrupting loss of broadband can be to you I am certain of that…
Let me know your thoughts, perhaps something similar has happened to you. Engage with me and I will happy to chat back with you. And you can follow me too on Twitter if you would like @JonathanDTowne1.