On Wed, 23 Aug 2017, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:

> Hi, for permanent machines you should use wired networking. The bottom line
> physics is this - the wires show the direction for the e-m waves to follow
> the path between your computer and the network hub. Without wires (wi-fi),
> the e-m waves are not sure which way to go and sometimes become lost.

Thanks, Konstantin.  Back in my undergrad days, I studied waveguides,
and I studied twisted pairs, but never the latter analysed as an
example of the former.  I think you're right that it can be seen that
way, although I'd imagine the maths would rapidly become horrendous,
because the impedance would vary with position in a stochastic way,
with a singularity each time the two wires cross.  Ouch.

In any case, when I tried going wireless on Thursday, I didn't
experience any loss of DNS, so I couldn't try any further
diagnostics.  I'll have another go today.