Elias Ward:
And I've seen this before in my career where routers will be fine when you first plug them in. And then over time, and it can be as soon as a couple days or weeks, or it can be months and years, it starts to have an issue. And I think that's what we were seeing here. So when our upstream provider was cleaning that fiber and they thought that was the issue, they plug it back in, everything looks great. And then about a week later, we start seeing the exact same thing. And I think that's what pushed them to look deeper into their hardware because it was coming up over and over again.

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
So,

Andrea Melton:
It wasn't the dirty fiber.

Elias Ward:
No, no. In this case, it wasn't the dirty fiber, but that's what made the most sense, which is why they did it.

Andrea Melton:
Right. Welcome to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. Kosciusko Connect is a subsidiary of Kosciusko, REMC. Since 2021, we have been providing lightning, fast, reliable fiber to the home, internet service to rural portions of northern Indiana. On Connected Conversations, we talk about fiber internet, technology, community, and how to navigate the digital world in which we live. I'm your host, Andrea Melton. Thank you for connecting with us today.

We are here in our studio, and so excited for this first episode of Connected Conversations. For this first edition, we decided to dive right into a topic that we feel our Kosciusko Connect customers and really internet users in general might appreciate some conversation around, and that is bandwidth issues. Specifically, we'll get to our own recent bout of network issues that affected upstream bandwidth, the cause of that issue and the remedy. Today I have with me Elias Ward, who is our network engineer here at Kosciusko Connect. Hi Elias.

Elias Ward:
Hi.

Andrea Melton:
Thank you so much for joining me today.

Elias Ward:
Hey, glad to be here.

Andrea Melton:
I'm glad to be here. We're going to unpack this issue of bandwidth. I'm a big fan of taking a moment to start at the basics. As I started in my role here at Kosciusko Connect just a couple of months ago, I've been learning some more detailed technical information than I really ever had previously. I figured there are probably a lot of people out there listening who are like me, people who use the internet daily, but didn't really have or don't have a lot of knowledge about the intricacies of the digital realm.

So back to basics. Bandwidth refers to the capacity or speed at which data can be transmitted over a network connection. A description that I liked that I found was thinking of it like a pipe and the data flows through the pipe. The wider the pipe, the more data can flow through, resulting in faster and more efficient internet access. So let's talk about what happens when you have bandwidth issues. Elias, isn't it true that it's really upload speeds that are primarily affected? And so maybe internet users performing more specific kinds of activities might be more likely to notice bandwidth issues or?

Elias Ward:
Yeah, so that's what we've been seeing lately is downloads are fine. Things like streaming, stuff like that really isn't affected. Coming down from the internet, not really an issue. It's been the going up. So people who are good examples, we have a couple customers who do heavy photography, video editing, streaming, things like that. They're all pushing things from their computer up to the internet. So that's kind of where they were seeing issues.

Andrea Melton:
Right. Yeah. If you have a big file, video files,

Elias Ward:
Right.

Andrea Melton:
I know. Massive.

Elias Ward:
Yeah.

Andrea Melton:
So especially somebody doing that. That makes sense. So causes of bandwidth issues. I recently wrote a blog just kind of trying to get the basics of demystifying bandwidth, and in that blog I identified common bandwidth issues, network congestion. When you have a lot of users in the same area or simultaneously accessing that network, it can lead to congestion, limited infrastructure. In some cases, bandwidth issues can stem from limitations of the underlying infrastructure of the network. Outdated equipment could cause bandwidth issues, slower speeds, and also just ISP or internet service provider constraints. So if your ISP is unable to meet the demands of its customers, that can lead to slower speeds. So at Kosciusko Connect, we did recently have a period of a few days where we were experiencing bandwidth issues with our service, and we even felt that here in our building. But what I heard from my coworkers when that issue started didn't really seem to fall into one of those categories. So I was told that there was dirty fiber. Did I hear that correctly? And can you please elaborate? What happened and caused our issues?

Elias Ward:
Sure. So we were having a few issues. Kosciusko Connect has grown very rapidly from some of our partners who helped us build this network. They've said that we are one of the fastest growing rural providers they've worked with.

Andrea Melton:
Wow.

Elias Ward:
And when the original bandwidth capacity that we put in was good for that slow growth they were used to seeing. Well, about a year ago, well, a little bit over a year ago, they realized that what we had was not going to work. We were going to hit capacity really quickly, which if anybody kind of had a little bit of slowness, especially in the evenings at the beginning of the year, that's what it was from. So over the last year, we were working with our upstream providers to increase that bandwidth, which they did. And everything looked like it was going good. And that's where you would've seen some of that bandwidth constraints where you said the congestion, it was, we were kind of saturated. We were hitting about 90%.

Andrea Melton:
Yeah.

Elias Ward:
So we got those upgrades done and we started seeing some issues. Well, for one of those, that was a new construction. Our upstream provider had done all new construction. They put in new fiber, put in new hardware, everything to get that capacity for us. Anybody who's ever done anything in construction knows you're going to have some issues. And that's what we were originally seeing. Now to your point about dirty fiber, so fiber essentially is you've got strands of glass that push light through.

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
So anybody who looks at a window dirty window, you're not going to see as well. And that's essentially what they were kind of seeing was that they thought it was dirty fiber. And so they would take those fibers out, they would clean them, put them back in.

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Elias Ward:
We started still seeing some issues with it, and now they're looking at some hardware on their end. The good thing about Kosciusko Connect and mostly providers is we don't rely on only one upstream provider. We have a couple different providers.

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Elias Ward:
So at the moment right now, nobody should be seeing any major issues because we're pushing all of our traffic through our secondary provider while our primary is fixing their issues.

Andrea Melton:
Gotcha.

Elias Ward:
So it wasn't a thing within the Kosciusko network, which is the reason why if people were using the Connect app or their router for speed test, it looked great.

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Elias Ward:
And as soon as you went out of that, even as something as close as South Bend or Chicago, you were seeing dramatic drops. And that was because that primary upstream provider was having an issue.

Andrea Melton:
I see. Okay. So that primary provider, the issue is not completely resolved, it's something they're still working on.

Elias Ward:
Correct.

Andrea Melton:
But we have remedied the issue on our end the best we can by directing traffic through our secondary.

Elias Ward:
Yes. We can,

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Elias Ward:
When it comes to networking, we can play a little bit with, we call routing, which is how the traffic gets from point A to point B. And so we just kind of told the traffic, go over here instead for now.

Andrea Melton:
Okay, very cool. So this is not something that a customer who had some issues recently should be worried about for long term or,

Elias Ward:
No, no.

Andrea Melton:
A reflection of what to be expected on a regular basis, I guess.

Elias Ward:
Right. No, definitely not. And I think it was just kind of a series of events that kind of led to that. Because of that new construction, you kind of work out some bugs and things like that. But there are also, and I've seen this before in my career where routers will be fine when you first plug them in and then over time, and it can be as soon as a couple days or weeks or it can be months and years, it starts to have an issue. And I think that's what we were seeing here. So when our upstream provider was cleaning that fiber and they thought that was the issue, they plug it back in, everything looks great. And then about a week later, we start seeing the exact same thing. And I think that's what pushed them to look deeper into their hardware because it was coming up over and over again.

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
So,

Andrea Melton:
It wasn't the dirty fiber.

Elias Ward:
No, no. In this case it wasn't the dirty fiber, but that's what made the most sense, which is why they did it.

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
But because we have those secondary connections, and that's the whole point, is that we don't rely just on one connection. We've got about 7,000 customers now, and we're not going to rely just on one provider.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. Okay. That's good to know. That's reassuring to me as an employee and also a Kosciusko Connect customer. I did not notice the issues at my home and I do have a gamer in the house, so I would've heard about it, I guess if we hadn't really seen a,

Elias Ward:
Yeah, most gaming is the same thing. It's going to be mostly download,

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Elias Ward:
Unless you're doing things like streaming, there's a little bit of upload, but it's mostly download because you're downloading that data and that content from the game servers.

Andrea Melton:
Okay. So not so much of an issue even with the gamers.

Elias Ward:
Right.

Andrea Melton:
But anybody uploading big files, lots of data.

Elias Ward:
Yeah. Essentially it was a, I'll be bold enough to say that it's a small percentage of people who do those heavy uploads,

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
But for us, whether it's five or six people or it's 5,000, we're trying to provide a quality service here.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely.

Elias Ward:
And so even when it was only five or six, and I got on the phone with a couple of customers to kind of help diagnose it because we didn't realize that there was an issue with upload because downloads are looking great.

Andrea Melton:
That makes sense. So we are confident in saying that while Kosciusko Connect is not immune from the occasional bandwidth issue with our fiber to the home configuration, we are definitely the superior choice for reliable internet.

Elias Ward:
Yeah, definitely.

Andrea Melton:
In our area.

Elias Ward:
Definitely. I know you and I had talked about this before and we talked about the fact that fiber is going to be your best delivery method for the internet for anything.

Andrea Melton:
Yes.

Elias Ward:
It's literally light going at this speed of light to the home, to the businesses and things like that. And so you're definitely going to get the best service out of fiber.

Andrea Melton:
For sure.

Elias Ward:
Additionally, it's a newer network where a lot of your DSL, cable, things like that are kind of aged equipment at this point too. And that's part of it.

Andrea Melton:
Yeah. That point that I hit earlier, the aged infrastructure,

Elias Ward:
Right. Right.

Andrea Melton:
Is going to lend itself to a lot of troubles. Our infrastructure is new and solid.

Elias Ward:
And we've worked through our construction issues I'm sure. I started here in January and I'm sure before then there were issues here and there and that kind of thing. And we worked through them. And with this new construction coming in, we were working through those issues. And I think once they figure out what's going on with that piece of hardware, which I know they've gotten their vendors involved, we're not going to really see that issue. And again, like I said, that's why we have the secondary. When we start seeing patterns like that, we can shift everything over so that we can still deliver.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. Well, I'm glad that you were able to take some time to talk with me today about the bandwidth issues, Elias. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I think it's pretty cool that we have this platform that we can kind of try to dig in and communicate these things to our customers directly. I don't think you'll find that from most internet service providers. So I think we're doing a good thing, and I appreciate you taking time to be our first guest on this first episode and really talk about something important that our customers would like to know about so.

Elias Ward:
Yeah, no problem. I think transparency is really a big thing. Even as somebody who's been doing this in a professional capacity, there's not a lot of transparency that I would get as a customer from any of the major providers. At best, I might be able to get, Hey, we fixed it. Well, what was it? Well, it was something.

Andrea Melton:
Right.

Elias Ward:
We'll leave it at that. And I don't really want that for our customers. I want our customers to understand we're not trying to hide anything. We're not trying to pretend that there's not a problem. The hardest part is sometimes those problems take a little bit to troubleshoot and figure out exactly where the cause is. And I think that can be a lot of frustration for customers, which is understandable. And so I want to be able to provide that kind of transparency to say, Hey, we know there's an issue. We're not hiding it. The problem is we're trying to figure out exactly where it is.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. Very good. We will stay in touch about this issue and hopefully that primary provider gets figured out on their end. And the meantime, we're good to go. Smooth sailing. Thank you, Elias.

Elias Ward:
Thank you.

Andrea Melton:
Have a great day.

Elias Ward:
You too.

Andrea Melton:
You've been listening to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. From all of us at Kosciusko Connect, thank you for connecting with us today.