Detecting odorless, deadly gas in the early days of underground mining was a problem whose solution was utilizing the delicate longs of a canary. If gas were released during an excavation, the canary would expire before the miners had aspired enough to be dangerous and they would have time to evacuate the mine to safety.
Before reliable internet availability was the norm, there was a challenge as an IT professional to ensure consistent connectivity for business use.
Crude monitoring tools were available that would log issues and send alerts but often these weren’t timely and there would be phone calls or office drop-ins asking “Is there something wrong with the internet?”
To supplement the network monitoring tools and stay ahead of staff rumblings, I would start streaming ClassicFM via an embedded player on its website. With the added benefits of relaxing music and vicarious escape via the London news and ads, I had a tool that would alert me to latency issues or full outages if the stream was choppy or lost completely.
ClassicFM was my canary in a coal mine.
Even as corporate connections moved from ISDN to T1 to MPLS, the first page I pulled up each morning was always ClassicFM.com and the blend of Berlioz, British news, Nigel Kennedy, local adverts, and Ludovico Einaudi would be the pleasant backdrop to my workday — until they weren’t and then I would switch to troubleshooting mode to bring them and the office back online.
And, even now with high-speed/high availability broadband in a hyper-connected home, I still reflexively wonder if something is amiss with the internet connection if Alexa has trouble streaming ClassicFM.