Sunday, March 19, 2006

Broken Internet... Again

Is It Me?

Since I've been in Kuwait, I've suffered from multiple Internet connection failures. There was the fire at the main ISP hub, the too-effective firewalls at the office, and then there's what seems to be me.

For the third time in my apartment (besides the week of fire-related failure), I awoke to find "You are not connected to the Internet" messages in my browser.

All three times have been right after I've downloaded files from friends. Coincidence, I wonder, or is it me? I know that in Kuwait bandwidth matters, whereas at home access is unlimited so long as you pay your monthly flat fee.

But whenever I upload or download comic book files, it doesn't seem to affect anything. And last night I was careful to only download a few mp3s, promising the friend that I'd get the rest the next time I'm on wi-fi at a coffee shop. Surely a few 600 dpi color comic book pages takes no less bandwidth than a few mp3s. Okay, they do, but not THAT much less.

Having no Internet access is not the end of the world. I learned to enjoy it when I lived in the Ugandan bush (if anyone actually needed me, I had a cell). Plus, I'll be at work in a few hours, and that connection is finally working. Maybe I'll get some work done at home for a change.

No one has yelled at me yet for breaking the Internet. But if the problem IS that I'm exceeding bandwidth capacity, it's only a matter of time until I'm sent into the corner to think it over.

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