Verizon Air Card Crash
For the most part, I have been very satisfied with our Verizon USB 720 air card, which we use in a Cradlepoint MBR 1000 Router. We enhance our signal with a Wilson Trucker cellular antenna and Wilson signal amplifier. We have used this system for almost two years now and have found it to be far superior for our needs over the Hughes Net dish we used for years before that. Except for only a couple of occasions, way out in the boonies of West Texas, we have always been able to get online.
But yesterday I was ready to throw the whole darned thing into the nearest dumpster!
We been sitting in the same spot here in Apache Junction for a week, and our download signal speeds have averaged from 1500 to 2200 kbps, with upload speeds of 145 to 220 kbps. (By comparison, about the best download speeds we ever recorded with the Hughes Net system was in the neighborhood of 750 kbps.) But about noon yesterday everything came to a screeching halt. Suddenly I could not get online at all, and when I finally did, opening any website or checking my e-mail took forever. More often than not, the system would time out before it would open a website.
We have experienced temporary slowdowns from time to time, but they are usually short term, no more than a few minutes usually. But until about 10 p.m. yesterday we were just dead in the water.
Terry picks up our router’s WiFi signal to get online, and she was just as slow. I took the air card out of the router and tried it in both of our laptops and in a USB port on my desktop, and even though we had five bars of signal strength, service was moving at the speed of sludge. The one speed test I was able to run showed a download speed of only 54 kbps! Updating the router firmware through Verizon’s Access manger did not help.
I don’t know what the heck was wrong, but then late in the evening, for whatever reason, suddenly the card was back up to normal speeds. I ran a check at Speedtest.net and we were back up to 1955 kbps download speed. Very weird. I don’t know what the problem was, or what fixed it. I hate computer gremlins.
While I was grumbling about the air card and beating my head against a stone wall trying to get online. Miss Terry was making up a batch of her homemade pizza dough, and about 5 p.m. we went over to her parents’ house and had our own pizza party.
Since I couldn’t get any work done online, I drowned my sorrows in piping hot cheese, spicy pepperoni, zesty sauce, and a crust to die for. I’m never going to lose weight.
Thought For The Day - Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
