Internet outages plague Rathlyn

Rathlyn, HB, Nov 3 – Rathlyn’s notoriously temperamental Internet connection is again having problems, this time striking at a crucial time for the capital.

Connection problems were first reported on Friday evening, with sporadic cut-outs affecting consumers across the city.

While by no means an infrequent occurrence, its continuation through Saturday and into the early hours of this morning has left many frustrated.

Businesses have reported outages, and students preparing for end-of-year exams have complained about the state of their internet connections, with one mentioning that “we never had this problem with dial-up”.

Within the government itself there is concern that the connection problems may hamper Sirocco Day celebrations on Monday.

The problems have also arisen as Sirocco prepares to leave Rathlyn in the coming weeks in favour of a return to Alston.

In the case of most people affected, their connections are live for anywhere between twenty seconds and ten minutes, before a sudden disconnection from the Internet that runs from one to ten minutes in length.

Technicians at both the National Centre of Computing and the Institute of Scientific Research have confirmed the outages are affecting upper Rathlyn, while the lower part of the city is reporting normal connectivity.

Technicians have also confirmed that the issue is affecting both Windows and Macintosh computers.

The city’s public Wi-Fi connection has reportedly not been affected, prompting a surge of users rushing to lower Rathlyn to connect.

Mobile internet connections, such as those with New Zealand ISPs Telecom and Vodafone, have not been affected, and have reportedly been faster and more reliable than current wall connections.

Rathlyn receives its internet from an ISP in Auckland, New Zealand, close to Rathlyn itself.

A spokesperson for the Hobson provincial government said last evening that attempts to reach the ISP in question have been unsuccessful thus far, but attempts to find a solution will continue today.

Throughout the year the capital has had problems with its connection, with slow-downs and drop-outs becoming a frequent nuisance.

In late July, connection speeds dropped so low that speed tests could not be conducted as the testing site itself could not load. What tests were able to be conducted reported the capital’s connection had dropped to around 14kb/s, a third of the standard 56kb/s dial-up baud rate and a mere fraction of the standard 10mb/s ethernet connection.