Plan Z

So, it's back to this.

I was about 2 minutes into my Zwift ride tonight when the program displayed a connection failure message. All of the other riders disappeared and I was left alone on the course. Everything seemed to be working OK, but the last time all of the other riders disappeared I was not able to save my stats at the end of the session. It’s like that ride never happened. I wasn’t about to continue tonight, only to lose another workout. This episode was the latest in a string of technical failures of varying severity. I have tried to improve Internet connectivity in the home gym, but that didn’t work. I have tried using my new, much more powerful laptop. That didn’t work either.

Last winter I used my old laptop to run Zwift in the home office. The laptop was connected by an Ethernet cable to my home network gateway, so the signal was as strong as it could be; I didn’t have to worry about WiFi. And until I started Zwifting in the home gym, I still wasn’t worrying about WiFi. I have other wireless devices that work fine in that location. But something about Zwift, whether it’s running on my old laptop or my new one, is unhappy in the home gym. I’m tired of fighting with it.

Tonight I moved my trainer back to the home office. I did three short Zwift sessions and they all worked flawlessly. (I wasn’t going to attempt a long ride, only to have the connection drop before I could complete the course.) I used the new laptop, which has twice the CPU speed and twice the RAM of the old laptop. As you should expect, Zwift runs noticeably better on the new laptop. And there didn’t appear to be any connectivity issues, though the new laptop has no Ethernet port and must connect to the Internet wirelessly. My wireless access point is only inches away from the laptop’s home on my desk, so signal strength is not a problem.

This is not the setup I wanted. Among other complaints, the monitor in my home office is much smaller than the one in my home gym. But I’ll live with it.

Ride on.