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Tuesday 10 January 2006

Pretty much the first thing taught to new programmers, well to any kind of scientist, is to vary only one thing when trying to solve a problem. I know this, and nonetheless this week I'm changing a whole bunch of things. I can't see the other side (at this point).

The list of things being changed this week include

1. switching ISPs from a small, local, ISP to a nationwide, soul-less, mega-corporation

Okay, well that happened. To be sure they showed up a day earlier than scheduled, and explained to me that "doing a new install" doesn't actually mean to install a new drop, it means to plug a cable box into the wall. Gee thanks. I'm so happy that I called a human after I booked via the web. I wonder what the person was doing as we chatted; it certainly wasn't taking notes in my account. Today they show up for the rescheduled (original) event, ready to go, and the drill is broken. After a half-hour wait for a replacement, Comcast finally gets things going. Not a warm and fuzzy feeling. But it's up and running.

2. switching connection from DSL (1.5 Mbps/384) to cable (4 Mbps/350)

Comcast is advertising 6 Mbps, but it turns out that's not city-wide, just in a small downtown corridor. We're getting 4 Mbps.



But it's not as straightforward as all that. I tried to BitTorrent the latest episode of the fan-fiction "New Voyages" only to be dismayed by a trickle of bits. A bit of research uncovers that I need to set my maximum upload speed to

(( 350 kbps / 8 ) * 0.7 ) = 30 kbps

Dividing by 8 converts kBits to kBytes. Multiplying by 0.7 yields 70%.

which I tried. I've also seen 80% as a better choice. A value of 40 kbps seemed to work a wee bit better, but I'm not sure how to test this reliably.

3. switching hardware from a vanilla hub to a WiFi NAT router

This went pretty easily, despite the Belkin F5D7230-4 box I scored on eBay. (This is the same box that I've installed for Dziadziu and the in-laws.)

Unfortunately, this box didn't work right out of the shrink-wrapped package. After a long wait for an Indian tech support person I found out that lots of them ship with corrupted drivers, so I had to download and flash the box. Now both WiFi and Ethernet work.

Unfortunately, their port-forwarding seems completely broken. I'm running an FTP server here (to let people drop web content off for inclusion in a new site) and it fails with the Belkin box, succeeds without it. Spent an hour on the phone, having a tech run me through all the troubleshooting I'd already done, before she realized her hours of training weren't up to the task. Escalation, but still no follow-up twelve hours later. Oh, I'm so impressed.


4. switching my domain from where it's been for a decade (Network Solutions) to a registrar with a much better reputation and a much cheaper hosting package (1and1)

5. switching my hosting situation from a miserly 350 MB to a whopping 5000 MB

That's making me really happy, even though I haven't yet taken advantage of it. I did just finish editing "BM2K5" (a short about Burning Man 2005), so perhaps I'll host that.

It's all very scary at the moment, and I hope it all ends well.