Our call center reports indicate a greater percentage of contact is to answer one generalized question: "Why can't I get on the Internet?" Although the percentage inquiry can be generalized in a single question, the answer is not singular. LS Net has a twenty years average of agent experience with networking solutions; by more than a decade in business, our communities of service know the answer to "Who you gonna call?".

Some reports should be metrics of delivery rate. Streaming multimedia at 56 kilobits per second is unpleasant enough. When throughput drops to 36 kilobits or less because of telephone facility degradation, that could be considered in perspective as missing Internet. Premise facilities are repairable with tools and skill; utility lines might require advocate support. As a supplemental service, LS.Net will communicate with local telephone companies, the State Corporate Comission, and anyone else leveraging facility improvements — keeping records and persisting with necessary subsequent calls.

Modems and routers eventually fail. Some fail from frequent changes to EEPROM settings; this special kind of persistant memory is only capable of limited updates and, like floppy disks, are less reliable over time. Lightning and other electrical transients wreak havoc on unprotected electronic devices. We maintain appropriate supply of modems for test and restoration of telephone, DSL, cable, and satellite connectivity; we also keep stock of UPS and surge protection to protect valuable equipment against environmental power impacts.

Curiosity kills the cat and, sometimes, disables Internet access. When budding computer experts in residence try configuration changes or supplemental software to improve Internet connectivity, account negotiation is affected. Passwords change in the click of a mouse; handshakes and flow control are easier changed. Our technicians have seen almost every misconfiguration possible on most operating systems and most common peripheral interconnection hardware; we reverse those errors with signature efficiency.

Some services depend on the function of other services. For instance, when Domain Name Service (DNS) is offline, a browser request for http://helen.ls.net will not be satisfied; however, http://12.168.116.27 will work — as long as helen is online. DNS makes surfing easier for humans by mapping names and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses … and the Internet uses addresses more effectively than names. Changing domain name servers for an Internet client is one way to improve Internet access; we configure DNS.

Other services might interfere with Internet experience. Routers are required to traverse the Internet. The curious reader might get an idea of how essential routers are by entering TRACERT helen.ls.net into a Windows command prompt. Each hop is another server before helen is available. Routers are plagued by down time and by saturation. When times are bad, an alternate ISP is effective insurance of connectivity; LS.Net offers inexpensive accounts and we can configure one during a site visit.

Ultimately, the quality of "Internet" access is judgement by each user's perspective. A qualified technician can make the "Internet" better by repair or being a valuable advocate.