Hi honey, I'm hooome
Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas. Kim and I spend a happy and lazy couple of days up at her parents place in New Hampshire eating tasty food and lounging around. Her brother brought his Xbox so I was able to survive and feed my addiction as well. We played a lot of Project Gotham which he spanked me at, Halo 2 which I spanked him at, and Need for Speed Unerground 2 which we were about the same at. I didn't really much care for NfS2, but this was probably more due to my innate loathing for everything EA.
I also got a chance to play a bit more of Prince of Persia 2, which we got for his Christmas present. The game's a lot of fun but the characters' speeches were written by invalid monkeys. I'll keep trying to look past that, but it's hard with such gems as 'You Bitch!' popping up at seemingly weird moments halfway through a fight in a cutscene.. Weird.
Conclusion of connectivity drama
In other news, I'm back in business baby! Oh yeah, that's right. My connection is once again everything that it should be and more!
On Friday, I couldn't wait for the tech to come out on Monday, so given that all signs were pointing to a shitty modem (yes I know Brandon) I ran out and purchased a new Motorola SB5100 from Circuit City as it's right around the corner from me.
Setup was naturally a breeze, plug it in, you're good to go. Instantly my speedtest results were transformed, and I didn't notice any degredation in the evening either. Today the tech came out and ran some tests on my signal strength up in the office. It was a +2 which is apparently ok (they range from -5 to +5 units of something). He looked at the smartbox for connections in the garage and discovered a 'stinger' on the connection to the office. This is when a thin strip of metal has peeled away from the main connector and is rubbing against the main coax input. It can apparently lead to bad signals so we got rid of that.
Next he checked the drop out of the back to the house itself and found another bad connection there. Apparently the wire install had sucked back into its housing, which was bad news.It can trap moisture and during winter can freeze- ick. New cable resolved that issue quickly.
Anyhow, the result of all this is that my connection is now much happier as you can tell from the latest speed test results:
Figured that I may as well follow this up with another ping trip to San Jose to see if I was still losing the occasional packet:
All now seems to be well, at least at the cables / cox end of the equation. I'm still running my PC on wires to the router, so now comes the test of whether with a solid cable modem connection, I can still game through wireless on my xbox downstairs. I'd like it to work, but I'm also open to running wires down there if i need to - the Cox Tech mentioned they might be able to work something through the house smart box which might avoid fishing wires through all of the walls which is worth checking out.
Onto the wireless speedtest.. Just as soon as I finish debugging the network adapter that I think I fried on the laptop on Friday :P
Merry Christmas, to one and all!
I also got a chance to play a bit more of Prince of Persia 2, which we got for his Christmas present. The game's a lot of fun but the characters' speeches were written by invalid monkeys. I'll keep trying to look past that, but it's hard with such gems as 'You Bitch!' popping up at seemingly weird moments halfway through a fight in a cutscene.. Weird.
Conclusion of connectivity drama
In other news, I'm back in business baby! Oh yeah, that's right. My connection is once again everything that it should be and more!
On Friday, I couldn't wait for the tech to come out on Monday, so given that all signs were pointing to a shitty modem (yes I know Brandon) I ran out and purchased a new Motorola SB5100 from Circuit City as it's right around the corner from me.
Setup was naturally a breeze, plug it in, you're good to go. Instantly my speedtest results were transformed, and I didn't notice any degredation in the evening either. Today the tech came out and ran some tests on my signal strength up in the office. It was a +2 which is apparently ok (they range from -5 to +5 units of something). He looked at the smartbox for connections in the garage and discovered a 'stinger' on the connection to the office. This is when a thin strip of metal has peeled away from the main connector and is rubbing against the main coax input. It can apparently lead to bad signals so we got rid of that.
Next he checked the drop out of the back to the house itself and found another bad connection there. Apparently the wire install had sucked back into its housing, which was bad news.It can trap moisture and during winter can freeze- ick. New cable resolved that issue quickly.
Anyhow, the result of all this is that my connection is now much happier as you can tell from the latest speed test results:
2004-12-27 11:28:21 EST: 5598 / 706
Your download speed : 5732922 bps, or 5598 kbps.
A 699.8 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 723152 bps, or 706 kbps.
test IP was to cox.net via COX.NET
Figured that I may as well follow this up with another ping trip to San Jose to see if I was still losing the occasional packet:
Ping statistics for 198.133.219.25:
Packets: Sent = 30, Received = 30, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 94ms, Maximum = 150ms, Average = 108ms
All now seems to be well, at least at the cables / cox end of the equation. I'm still running my PC on wires to the router, so now comes the test of whether with a solid cable modem connection, I can still game through wireless on my xbox downstairs. I'd like it to work, but I'm also open to running wires down there if i need to - the Cox Tech mentioned they might be able to work something through the house smart box which might avoid fishing wires through all of the walls which is worth checking out.
Onto the wireless speedtest.. Just as soon as I finish debugging the network adapter that I think I fried on the laptop on Friday :P
Merry Christmas, to one and all!
posted by CatSpit at
11:19 AM
