On a tiny human scale, having taken about 18 months to resolve my first broadband problem, I was disheartened to begin another phase of degrading performance debugging.

I discovered the poor performance was not the wireless connectivity as I’d first thought. I ran some tests, which showed that the ADSL downstream rate (about 2mbps) was actually performing at about 1/8th of that speed. So here’s what happened next…

• Go to room with phone connection (other side of the house).
• Find the emergency USB modem.
• Spend even more time locating the driver disk.
• Install it on Vista notebook (I know, I should have known better).
• Extract XP notebook from docking station perched on window sill under large printer and assorted heavy items.
• Boot the XP notebook (takes an eternity).
• Screen display occupies only about 20% of the LCD display panel (I just squint rather than sort it).
• Insert CD into drive (discover the drive no longer works).
• With great difficulty remove DVD drive from docking station (the one under the printer).
• Remove RH battery from notebook to use DVD instead (further discover DVD only goes in LH slot).
• Put battery back in RH and remove LH battery (machine then dies).
• Swap batteries and reboot (second eternity).
• Start to read from DVD drive (other battery dies).
• Root around in the attic for notebook power supply.
• Reboot (third eternity).
• Install driver from DVD (wait for installshield…).
• Spot the message: ‘The installshield kernel.exe could not be installed’.
• Reboot (leave the room for a while).
• Install driver, this time successfully (test is good at a ping response of 40-50ms).
• Plug Vista notebook directly into the router (test is good at a ping response of 70-70ms).

So the culprit appears to be the very long cable which goes out of the new to the old office ….

• Call BT and wait in a queue …
• Get a quote to move external telephone line socket 20 metres (£166).
• Fetch the drill (needs recharging).
• Recover the ladders from back paddock under 2 feet of undergrowth and struggle to hoist it in place.
• Drill two holes, one in each windowframe.
• Promise to finish the job properly with cable clips and sealant (so leave the ladder in place).
• Plug everything back in and yippee (150ms ping times).

(After a bad night’s sleep due to severe back pain from crawling under desks, lifting heavy ladders etc,I decided to leave the finishing off).

Today, we had a violent storm (just 24 hours before the CERN LHC boots up so that can’t be the cause). Out of my window I saw the yellow network cable doing a vigorous two meter pendulum, just before the ladder moved close to its tipping point.

I braved the storm and the ladder is now on the ground. Lord knows when I’ll get round to picking it up and fixing the cable in place.