Does Internet Speed Vary by Season?

Sun Oct 11 05:23:26 UTC 2009

Having worked in Operations at various ISPs in rain-riddled Houston for 1.5
decades, I can say that when it rains, water gets into the copper lines in
the ground and caused increased copper-based local loop failures.  

That experience leaves me open to believe that where the internet backbone
is copper based, when it rains, failures may ensue due to old or improperly
installed outside plant and could cause failures which would slow down the
internet.

I would also conjecture that more people would be on line during bad
weather, so that internet usage would increase and perhaps over-wrought
links (copper or otherwise) could have some congestion.

Finally, in those places where the internet is experienced through wireless
links, some may see weather related slow downs.

On Oct 9, 2009, at 5:38 PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote:

> Well, since it's been documented that internet speed / usage varies  
> with
> the weather (it gets faster when it's sunny, slower when it rains)  
> I'm sure some
> seasonal correlation could be found.

Could you point to the documentation?

I having trouble with language that sounds like one concept and I  
suspect is in fact another. Take as one example the basic digital  
signaling hierarchy. The specifications call for a certain rate plus  
or minus some number of parts per million. If they are within  
tolerance, the amount that they would speed up or slow down is  
measured in a pretty small number of bits per second. So I don't think  
the speed of the links is materially changing. If on the other hand we  
are discussing the volume of traffic using that available capacity, it  
is absolutely clear that there are diurnal, weekly, and seasonal  
variations as well as growth in time.

Are we talking about bit rate, which one might expect to be modified  
by environmental characteristics and is in fact very tightly  
controlled to prevent that, or traffic volume?