With the wedding just a few weeks away (May 29th), the time has come. Mike moved his big mongo computer setup over here last weekend. Ideally, this shouldn’t effect me in any way. (Well, except the ergonomic keyboard issue.) It should be business as usual. The network should be happy.
Instead, it has left me beating my head on my laptop for over an hour. I have almost NO internet connection. I only have half of the photos I need for a project I am working on downloaded from my e-mail. I can’t upload photos, it times out every time I try. Why?!? Why now?!? Why me?!?
Finally, I give up on the laptop. I figure I will try using his desktop computer. It doesn’t have a photo editor on it (at least I don’t think it does), but maybe I can do something. Anything.
Then I discover that he is downloading a 2730mb file. 2.7gb. A HUGE, huge, HUGE file. Well, craptastic. No wonder I can’t see the web! The poor computer sounds like it wants to cry. Everything is working at maxed out full speed. I still can’t really get on the Internet, and it won’t let me download the images I need. I have no clue if this is work stuff or fun stuff, and I don’t want to kill the download and then find out he needed it for a 9 am meeting. But … GAH! I wanted to finish what I was working on!
From now on, there will have to be rules about huge file downloads. We are a multi-PC household; we can’t go cutting someone else off by hogging all the bandwidth!
15 replies on “Too Many Geeks…”
I remember what I was going to ask you the other day. It was about threading. Call me later.
Hehe, we have a similar problem in our house sometimes. There’s four of us geeky types all living under one roof and sharing two net connections. I killed the bandwidth for a while once downloading a 4gig file 🙂
2.7 gig? Good lord, what’s he downloading, encyclopedias from the Library of Congress? 🙂
Don’t want to be without ‘The Last Samurai’ at that business meeting! 🙂
And I thought we had problems letting the mac and pc duke it out for bandwite. Somehow the mac always wins the fight. Guess who is almost always on the pc?
As another member of the double-geek brigade, let me suggest that the bandwidth pipe that’s big enough for one may not be big enough for two. Time to upgrade your plan.
(And of course the Mac wins. So does Truth, Justice, and the American Way. 🙂
A truly geekish house would set up bandwidth shaping on a Linux box as a firewall. 🙂
A local ISP was offering 3 megabit down/768 kbit up DSL for $49/month for 12 months, then 70/month afterwards. Sounds like it might be time to shop for a new plan?
Tom does that to me all the time!!! we do have a linux box that’s not always on and the router software is on our router itself.
typical geek household complaint. LOL! Sam does it to me all the time. Usually, though, it just takes me going… “uhm… why’s the internet so slow??” and then it dawns on him that maybe he should download his stuff when I’m not online…
Tell Mike to check out traffic shaper. 🙂
Fair point. 🙂 It was for work (Visual Studio 2005 Tech Preview), but as I only have a dvd burner at home, I pulled it down at home. I thought that it was late enough that it wouldn’t bug you. Sorry ’bout that.
You could accidentally have a power outage… 😉
I know when my husband is downloading some huge file b/c of the slow connection, and I always ask him what he’s downloading. He’s finally gotten to where he’ll download whatever it is late at night so it doesn’t affect me.
what?! you mean i have to share my bandwidth when i get married?! forget it. i’ll be single forever.
Things work for us only because he works outside the home during the day and I’m at home during the day. I’m usually done on the computer by the time he gets home and fires up his. 🙂 We have a good cable connection though and don’t really pull down any big files. The oldest is on her laptop through our router all the time. I never feel it when she’s downloading anything or vice versa.