Computers, Networks and Murphy's Law

While on vacation recently good old Murphy's law came up and bit me. In my selection of a vacation rental I made sure it had broadband access so in case I had to put out fires at $WORK I could easily connect. Also for the ride there I had my Clear 4G mobile hot spot to keep my passenger happy (my wife).

As we head up the NJ Turnpike my wife turns on the iPad only to complain that it isn't connecting. I say "Turn on the hot Spot and see if we have a signal." Well no signal. We are about 15 miles from New brunswick where I last used it without a hitch. So for the next 15 minutes grumbling about a waste of money is heard. We hit the New brunswick area and we have a signal and she can connect to her Radio station that has just gone out of range. Life is good until we get close to the george Washington bridge when the iPad app freezes. Short stop needed to kill the app and restart it.

Life is good again as we cross the GW bridge and I see nothing but overpasses, underpasses, tunnels and think "There goes that 4G connection." Like clockwork the signal drops but so does the GPS as I stare at a jumbled screen and in front of me are four arrows pointing in all directions. I choose door B (95 north) but the grumbling starts and I can see my iPad and hot spot getting launched out the car window so at the first chance I pull over and do some quick tech support.

For the rest of the trip I convince her to forget the iPad. We get to our rental and everything is great. Great connectivity to the houses WiFi (a new Netgear wirelss router on an Optimum Cable connection). All devices are connecting and working until my son and his family show up. He asks for the WiFi key and he can't connect also my ipad no longer can connect just my laptop. I am on vacation, it is 9 PM and I have to do a tech support call. I just hand him my laptop and say this will suffice for now.

No matter what I do my laptop is the only thing that will work. I now have a 5 year old screaming for her tablet, two women wanting their device to connect and my son wanting to now when he can work on his laptop. So a 2 hour run to the nearest best Buy, purchase a cheap wireless router and some cable. Come back and they have their own network. My vacation life is good again.

It just goes to show you that when you expect a computer device to work it will not. After handling networks all day you would think that a wireless network in a house without any active directory, kerberos servers, firewall rules and multi spam devices to maintain it would be reasonably simple to handle one little wireless router.

One thing I am doing is canning the clear 4G hot spot and going back to the 3G hotspot as it has more coverage. Also I have no idea why I trusted the salesmen when he said "Oh yeah it will go back to 3G if 4G isn't available." I knew that wasn't correct but I figured "Why would he lie to me? I am a nice guy."

I guess the moral of this story is to look at my mobile internet connectivity as I look at my networks at $WORK. Vital for the operations. Also vital to one's piece of mind when  trying to relax.