I frequently get network timeout problems when using Interpreter in ways that require connectivity to the Wolfram server. My network connection in general is quite fast, so I don't think that's the issue. Here's an example.
We have a list of presidents using their common names.
presidents= {"George Washington", "John Adams", "Thomas Jefferson", "James \
Madison", "James Monroe", "John Quincy Adams", "Andrew Jackson", \
"Martin Van Buren", "William Henry Harrison", "John Tyler", "James K. \
Polk", "Zachary Taylor", "Millard Fillmore", "Franklin Pierce", \
"James Buchanan", "Abraham Lincoln", "Andrew Johnson", "Ulysses S. \
Grant", "Rutherford B. Hayes", "James A. Garfield", "Chester A. \
Arthur", "Grover Cleveland", "Benjamin Harrison", "Grover Cleveland \
(2nd term)", "William McKinley", "Theodore Roosevelt", "William \
Howard Taft", "Woodrow Wilson", "Warren G. Harding", "Calvin \
Coolidge", "Herbert Hoover", "Franklin D. Roosevelt", "Harry S. \
Truman", "Dwight D. Eisenhower", "John F. Kennedy", "Lyndon B. \
Johnson", "Richard Nixon", "Gerald Ford", "Jimmy Carter", "Ronald \
Reagan", "George H. W. Bush", "Bill Clinton", "George W. Bush", \
"Barack Obama", "Donald Trump"};
I now want to represent them as entities so that users can get further information on them. So, here's the plan. I want to make one call to Interpreter rather than Map Interpreter over a list of names.
presidentEntities=Interpreter["Person", True &, Missing[], AmbiguityFunction -> First][
presidentNames]]
When I do this, I frequently get a network timeout error. Now it's Sunday afternoon here in the US and I wouldn't think this was peak load time. Moreover, I've gotten the error -- and similar errors for other Interpreter calls -- on many other occasions. Moreover, I don't think 45 names should really tax the Wolfram server too hard.
So, are there any user workarounds for this? (I've tried the ugly method of breaking up the list into pieces and then reassembling, but even that sometimes fails). Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way of making some Interpreter code local? Is there some way of determining that the Wolfram Server is having a bad day or hour or suffering a particularly heavy load?
More generally, is there something that can be done about WolframAlpha throughput. The Wolfram Language (as opposed to Mathematica) depends on access to vast amount of external data. But if I can't count on reliable service, it discourages use of programs and constructs that depend on that data and the Entity construct.