Above: A crane worker modifies the logo of Stop & Shop's office building on Hancock Street. Our WiMAX antenna looms in the background. Photo taken from the roof of Quincy District Court. (JOE SPURR/WBUR)

We’re offline today. Yesterday was intermittent, too. We apologize for the interruption.

Troubleshooting network problems is an inevitability when livestreaming video all day every day. What’s surprising is when the problem isn’t, say, the protocol for how our router is assigning IP addresses, but a GIANT CRANE MESSING WITH OUR INTERWEBZ.

We have a unique internet setup at Quincy District Court. We use Towerstream antennas, seen above and on the roof, to provide hefty bandwidth in lieu of a normal cable internet connection at the court. We need a line of sight between the antennas for the data to flow.

Normally it works like a charm, even through snow, rain, haze and fog, but we admittedly hadn’t anticipated a mechanized, Godzilla-like swing-arm to be part of Stop & Shop’s Quincy reinvestment strategy.

Towerstream has dispatched a techie anyway to make sure it’s not just the crane. We’ll be live again tomorrow. Thanks again for your patience.

UPDATE: (Thursday, June 30): The crane is gone, and the signal is strong. See you in the a.m.

UPDATE: (Friday, July 1): We’re live and our signal is strong.

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