Category: Calamities

Calamities Bring Up Broadband Speeds
Who would have thought that I’d get speed ups whenever there is a calamity? I know I shouldn’t be happy,^[1] but who wouldn’t? I’ve been downloading at a semi-steady rate of ±100 kiB/s, and have been getting boosts of up to 175 kiB/s on BitTorrent and above 200 kiB/s on linear HTTP downloads.

I’ve posted about this certain speed up last December after the Pacific earthquake that destroyed international underwater communication lines connecting South East Asia. The test result from that entry was already gone, but I have another bookmarked result dating around that time, which probably is just below to what speed I’ve had back then:

And now, during the rage of Egay in this storm season, I get this:

Amazing, isn’t it? Thinking that I still have that cheapest old myDSL plan, which isn’t NGN yet, advertised at 384 kbps. I think I’ve currently downloaded 2.5 GiB of data within the last 24 hours, not including what my father had on our desktop. Any more ideas on what to leech? I have to get the most out of this before the Sun comes. Heh.

Anyway, are you experiencing this as well? One friend of mine have had comparable results, but not everyone on the same ISP. I really don’t think PLDT has had my connection upgraded yet, for they required me to pass a speed increase application form for old subscribers that I still haven’t done yet.^[2]

Test your speed now, and comment below to tell me I’m not the only one who should be happy. ^^

Footnotes:
1. ^ well, about the calamities
2. ^ I know, what the hell, right? It should be automatic!
17 August 2007
Internet Connection Problem Resolved?

I would have blogged the buggy Internet connection I was experiencing since December 26 after I heard from my father news about the Taiwan earthquake that damaged undersea communication lines, but it was all over the Philippine Blogosphere with news from Jhay, Yuga, et al. that I decided to stay quiet instead—its no use blogging the same entry all over again.

The early times during the lowered bandwidth period, I ,as well as my friend Jayson, noticed that we could still connect to our ISP, but it cannot resolve host names. I immediately turned my PC on and searched my browsing history for IP addresses. Alas! I found a Google cache URI of my site where Google used its IP address instead of its domain name. Great Google! Since it is a search engine in itself, I immediately searched for a Google cache of OpenDNS—I could not open its homepage in itself as my ISP currently could not resolve its domain name to the IP address—thus a cache is more than sufficient. My [and Jayson’s] DNS issues are resolved.

Though I sometimes experience the reduced bandwidth and intermittent disconnections, I guess it’s still enough to say that it could have gotten worse than that, and I still feel somehow satisfied. But after reading Euri’s recent rant about crappy Internet connections from a cafÃ©, I decided to test my own connection.

I was shocked with the results considering I was downloading bittorrent files at 30-40 kBps, I’m on PLDT‘s slowest myDSL, plan 999, and test results from testmy.net prior to this one never reached 400 kbps! I even tried the Speakeasy Speed Test but got these lower but similar results from its Seattle, WA server:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 502 kbps (62.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 114 kbps (14.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

I really can’t tell whether or not I am the only one experiencing this, but I know the intermittent connections would likely last for several weeks. Was it really resolved so fast this time?

31 December 2006
Back to School
It isn’t the start of the semester or the academic year, but it sure feels like it as numerous school activities, weather mis-forecasts, and just the regular weekends got packed into one hell of a vacation I might as well call a weekendless. Our class of 3ECEA wouldn’t even have our laboratory instructor for tomorrow—though lectures still would take place. But, counting the days since the suspension of classes, it totals to six days of no classes all in all.

But, I guess I just have to rant some things that I have to get out of my system:
- The first one would be the devastating effect of the Super Typhoon Reming especially in the provinces. While I was busy having fun because of little rainfall with the suspension of classes, I sadly realized many have been hardly hit by the raging typhoon resulting to many casualties. Let us pray for them.
- I still haven’t learned much this late in the semester! All those class suspensions and school activities—with examples including but are not limited to the recollection early this morning and NECES week last, last week, with activities almost every morning conflicting with our schedule—consumed class time.
- All these absent professors/instructors keep me justifying myself for lack of self-discipline finishing certain school work.
Anyway, I still can’t feel the Christmas spirit. When I was a kid we used to setup the tree within the range of October-November (whenever there’s semester break or before the All Souls’ Day vacation ends), but it’s now December and not even one decoration is up yet. But, hey: For those thinking about what to give me this coming Holidays, I wouldn’t give you much of a hard time trying to find out what to give me—even if you didn’t even greet me on My Birthday Entry. *tee-hee*
- Computer case: white, ATX form factor, HDD bays in front of a 120-mm noiseless intake fan, and front-panel USB ports as minimum specs 😉
- Digital SLR camera
- Apple iPod USB power adapter
- Better-sounding earphones [or maybe even better-sounding lanyard earphones for 1st gen nano]
- Internal DVDÂ±R/RW drive, white; and
- Maybe some original Evanescence CDs 😛
Yes, yes … I know I could keep on dreaming. LOL

BTW, I have migrated the formerly Blogger-platformed quote log located at /special, to a WordPress installation in this server. Please visit: x22. The Qlog will be updated soon. 🙂
5 December 2006