A recent personal experience: I help run an Internet radio station. During the day, the broadcast streams from one of the computers in my house. Lately, the stream has lagged which has the effect of the music sounding like it’s skipping (and therefore losing listeners). For a day or two, I assumed the problem was Comcast and that there was nothing I could do about it. After it persisted for a week, I finally ran a version of VisualRoute that was supplied from the stream provider. Lo and behold, we have met the enemy and it is us!

The result showed that all the internet latency was between my cable modem and Comcast. I went upstairs and pulled the cable modem from between the wall and a hard place (a large speaker). I reset it. I also noticed it was very hot to the touch. I went back and checked the stream. It still skipped after the reset. But, after a few minutes, the skipping went away.

Poor thing, it just needed some fresh (and cool) air! Moral: machines need cool air, just like us.