Does Internet Speed Vary by Season?

[jgreco at ns.sol.net (Joe Greco)]

> Maybe I'm way off.. Maybe its view of KISS but as engineers we should 
> all be looking for the simplest answer.  To me they key in Dragos' 
> post was usage. All physics aside, the warm weather (seasonal) people 
> go out more, use the internet less. In cold months, we stay in, use 
> the net more.  As for document any of us that run networks have seen 
> this well document going back many years in our mrgt graphs.  But 
> then maybe he was refering to the physics, and I just try to simplify 
> things to much.

Usage has an effect on overcommit, yes.

However, when you notice that the average connect speed goes down for a
day or two after a cold heavy rain, that's not usage.  There are not 
more than one modems connecting(*) to a port.  So you have established
that something about the quality of the physical layer has been affected.

... JG

(*) In the late 1990's, I heard the most astonishing claims made by a new
entrant into the Milwaukee ISP market, about how some of the "other" ISP's
"shared" lines between customers and this decreased your speeds.  They had
no clue who I was, so I engaged their technical person for a while who set
out to convince me that other ISP's really _did_ do this mythical line-
sharing - multiple modems to one port.  Until I started talking about the 
technical aspects, that is.
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
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