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Posted by Ballpark Frank (192.88.135.18) on 12:53:32 05/26/20
In Reply to: web cams posted by tigerlady
tigerlady,
I have not been able to ascertain the source of the current network problems, but I have seen evidence of some sort of intermittent problem that is impacting Yellowstone and Bozeman, where I live. When I first tried to download the Yellowstone cams, it appeared they were down, but gradually, they loaded, much slower than normal. I saw evidence of an intermittent problem are simple network overloading, as the streaming web cam evidenced periodic stops, then starts. When I went looking for any news on a network outage via the local media, I found the same symptom up here in Bozeman. The NPS has not published any notification of a problem on their webcam page; and CenturyLink's DownDetector website does not show any obvious outages. Given that the web locally is not acting totally down, but exhibiting up/down symptoms, my first suspicion is network capacity issues. When the social distancing directives were first issued, and many adults were confined to their homes, with some working from home, AND the schools closed, we saw tremendous usage strains on the networks. Bored parents and their kids were chatting with friends over the web, uploading and downloading photos and videos, and participating in videoconferences (big bandwidth hogs) via Skype, Zoom, and comparable applications. I saw numerous instances where the web almost cratered. Response times plummeted. Videoconferences were plagued by intermittent delays or stoppages. We still see some evidence of this. I'm hoping that this current glitch is simply a traffic overload problem, which will resolve itself later in the day, when traffic slows (if it slows). If it is something technical, that could be a major physical network problem, like "backhoe fade" (where someone operating earth-moving gear severs a major network backbone fiber optic cable - they typically parallel interstate highways or railroad tracks in the rural west). At present, none of the local media or nationwide web outage tracker/reporters, like Thousand Eyes, is reporting any large scale outages in this area, so I am betting we are just seeing network congestion due to the network being overloaded.
Ballpark
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