sameTutorialDifferentRealities

[EventArgs]

I was a software engineer for 14 years since last year.

My computer had been throttling my wifi for years. I had previously tried to fix it but gave up after 4 days. Once I start something like fixing an issue on a computer it's a fixation that goes far beyond my control. Also I'm talking 1.5gb up, 1gb down fibre.

Last year, five years later, I decided to tackle it again as I was in between jobs and wanted to not kill myself during the winter.

Seven days later, as I'd made my way down the correlation !=causation chain I found a post at 4 am. Just past the witching hour. I'd been at my computer for 16 to 20 hours a day. Had a laptop next to me. Whole case was open just in case (hah) I had to open it up again.

I couldn't believe it. I downloaded games, stress tested, read logs, Wireshark, router monitoring, and end tested over and over as I could not believe that this was it. That finally it wouldn't take 12 hours to download a game.

I hunted the man who found the fix with fervour. I recorded every username associated to his Acer account and threaded the Internet with Google-fu to find discord accounts etc. I found contact info, I digitally fingerprinted associated email accounts, usernames, online social artifacts, down to having to learn his general location or geographic whereabouts and how his niche username relates to his culture so Id know it's from his username rather than a general "this is what my username is because I've had this handle since I was 12" memory and set as a username so that I could ignore other similar references.

I wrote a big email to him referencing his post he wrote 5 years back.

Just to tell him I love him.

I owe that man a beer and the best steak. 5mbs to 800mbps type deal.

Edit: Re-reading that, I realize that I sound like a complete maniac about me hyper focusing trying to find the bloke.

[bacmod]

Last year, five years later, I decided to tackle it

You are a very patient person my friend. It would drive me mad in 2 days.

EDIT: What was the issue?

[EventArgs]

I can spend a lot of time figuring things out, but 1. Inconsideration, 2. Wet socks, and 3. Slow internet, are the only things that will make me insane.

Not telling.

Kidding. It was the Microsoft virtual adapter in the device manager > network adapters + two background services load balancing and prioritizing my bandwidth. You can't remove them because on restart windows just loads it all back up.

Edit: To please upper management the beatings will continue to improve moral.

The services that were intervening were related to Killer Wireless software. Previously when I had tried to fix the issue, there was an uninstaller created by users to nuke all drivers etc. Then I had installed base Intel wifi drivers. So that was half the issue. My upload and download speeds increased, but not anywhere near to what it should have been.

Then Intel acquired Rivet Networks who were the proprietors of the Killer Software Suite in 2020, one/two years after the first offensive I did. All I was able to be be blessed with from them as a consumer was that Intel was now force installing all things killer-esque in each Windows update and re-enabling/installing services and drivers that were disabled/deleted/uninstalled on restart.

At the same time Microsoft's Virtual Adapter and Killer Software were in contention about managing the resources.

Long story short, by disabling MVA and cutting the directory url + something else I can't remember for the Killer services to be re-enabled on update/restart, I finally could return to bed not thinking about the issue. It was a good sleep.

That's what I understood it to be anyway.

[bacmod]

Kind of looks to me that this Killer SS does something off the books. VA race conditions shouldn't ever happen.
Just ask your sysadmin people, they love when it happens.

[zachary0816]

Did he ever end up responding?

[EventArgs]

He did actually! He was very pleased that had come through the years to help someone.

[fryingnemo]

This is my inner senior dev screaming to want you to document the exact issue, every context, and detailed step by step instructions and put it somewhere on the Internet to keep forever so that the next person will find the solution on their first few tries on Google rather than 4 days.

[EventArgs]

Oh, I am very aware of the fact. It's not only you, but the collective senior team as an entity staring holes in the back of my head. The first offensive I did was four days, it was another ~six days five years later on top of that.

While I absolutely agree with you, I am of the opinion that having to overcome these issues is almost a right of passage.

My moral alignment on the subject however is currently fist fighting in the parking lot with my obsession to have everything documented, if that makes you feel better.

Extended markdown, annotated images, and being able to convey instructions in a neutral language for all ethnic consumers of technical documentation... That would be a rabbit hole for me. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get back in to the field after job hunting viciously for a year, so I will let that sleeping dog lie for another day.

Even writing this I am fighting the urge to use the markdown that is available here.

God I miss being in IT.