Traffic Jam on the Super Highway  ©2003

Click... one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...  Will the home page ever come up?

If you are like me, you remember the pre-Internet age as a slow, lumbering, geek-infested era, when it took three days for electronic messages (the precursor to email) to cross the country via a maze of bulletin board system (BBS) computers.  Various networks of BBS's competed for the small but growing marketshare of kids, programmers and computer-savvy businesses, many charging nominal fees or none at all.  My own BBS was part of FIDOnet, a group of about 600 BBS servers interacting each night across the country.

I remember shelling out big bucks for the new US Robotics 16,000 baud (16,000 bits, or about 1,500 characters, per second) dial-up modem, which we immediately used in place of our slower 9,600 baud Hayes modem. Speed is relative and the wait time of fifteen seconds for a text-only page to load onto your screen was considered fast.  Cut that to twelve seconds and the users flocked.

As everyone knows, modems increased speeds as the Internet became available and graphics were accepted as necessary. Broadband, which is the loose term for any Internet access speeds above the fastest modems available to PC's, has integrated itself into daily life in just about three years.  Today we commonly discuss MEGA-bits (millions of bits) per second with no sense of awe. "Bandwidth," a term meaning the connection speed and volume in a network, including the Internet, has become available to the masses.

However, now we are seeing a reversal in access speed as several factors affect the waiting times many are experiencing today.

Most broadband vendors use shared (or community) lines to and from the Internet.  Examples of this type of Internet access are cable modem, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and wireless Internet.  Lines can be physically shared by subscribers and the direct connection to the Internet can be shared within the ISP for a double-whammy of traffic slowdowns.

Internet Service Providers share their Internet bandwidth with many users

There are a myriad of ways that an "ISP" (Internet Service Provider) splits up its connection to the Internet.  Specifically, there is a connection that extends from the ISP to its own Internet Provider, usually in the next "tier" up the bandwidth ladder).  If an ISP is servicing twelve neighborhoods or business districts, their main Internet connection may be split, with routing or switching hardware, to all twelve lines. Each of those, in turn, are shared by the various users attached to that cable.

In previous years, during part of the day, as home users were working or attending school, the broadband connections may have been adequate to provide good speed to the Net.  By five o'clock, after school children and their parents returned home restless to go online, Internet use jumped and the connection was slowed by sharing among a larger number of users.

This traffic jam has been exacerbated by a number of events, not the least of which is the large number of broadband providers that have gone out of business.  Also, many providers have returned to "over-subscribing."  

In order to keep costs to a minimum, ISP's rightfully want to avoid the cost for bandwidth that is not being used.  Actual numbers of online users change during the day, as does their usage (downloading takes more bandwidth than browsing).  The fine line between supply and demand has been moving away from supply, especially as demand goes up. Imagine an ISP with 2000 subscribers has 300 users online at 8am, 500 at noon, 400 at 2pm, 1500 at 5pm and 1000 at 8pm.  How much bandwidth is enough?  The obvious answer is enough for the maximum of 1500 users, but this is almost never the case. ISP's are affected by the economy and regularly only provide half of what is needed.  Many have suffered from their loss-leader pricing in attempting to compete for marketshare. Others simply feel no need to give their customers adequate connection speed.  This is "over-subscribing", much like "over-booking" at the airlines.

Demand is up and connection speed down.  What can you do?  A business certainly needs adequate access to the Internet, but monthly prices of broadband vary with vendor, type, usage and geographical area.  The more they guarantee access speed the more the access costs. This makes sense because if bandwidth is parceled out by switches for exact volume, cost sharing among all the subscribers isn't available.

The first thing you need is to judge your own need.  Internet bandwidth is usually parceled out in 64K (64,000 bits) or 128K chunks.  If you only browse and rarely download files, starting with 64K, you can figure about 10K of additional bandwidth per simultaneous user (users online and using the Internet at one time). Ten users would require 256K (64+100, rounded up to nearest 128)  If they download often, you'll want more than that, obviously, but trial and error may be necessary.  Terminal Server or Citrix sessions, a method of "wide-area-networking," usually requires a minimum of about 40K per user, so 10 users would need at least 512K.  Once the need is greater than 512K, pricing usually dictates that you get a full T-1 (1.5Mbits) or DSL (1 or 1.5Mbits).  For example 768K may cost the same as 1Mbit (or 1,000K), so why not have the better connection?

Another measure that must be determined is the speed "up" and "down."  The bandwidth coming to you (down) from the Internet and from you (up) to the Internet can be set and priced separately by the ISP.  Satellite dishes (i.e. DirectPC) connect at relatively high-speed "down" from the satellite, but "up" only from a dial-up phone connection. In the case of business use, you'll want these speeds to be the same, but pricing may dictate trying different packages (256K down, 128K up).  Browsing may not dictate any preference in the "up" speed as everything it uses is "down".

Second, get a variety of pricing for different vendors.  Find out which types of bandwidth are available to your location by using the yellow pages and calling local Internet Providers and your local cable company.  For business use, you should consider no connection that does not guarantee the speeds you determined were necessary.

Another option, a T-1 line, consists of a bundle of twenty-four 64K channels, can normally be utilized for Internet connection, regular voice phone lines, or a combination both.  I have seen many companies increase their bandwidth and actually reduce their monthly costs by "fracturing" their T-1 in this manner.  For example, for 9 phone lines and the balance for Internet will give you 960K of guaranteed bandwidth up and down.

Finally, once your Internet line has been installed, monitor your use and the speeds you are actually getting and compare with your guarantee.  If necessary, you may have to secure technical support from the ISP to troubleshoot a deficient connection.  As you grow, remember to figure increases in bandwidth in your planning.

I could probably devote an entire column or two just to normal Internet issues, but speed is the aspect that everyone notices and that directly affects productivity in the office.  Make sure it is adequate and most other problems will seem minor indeed.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at jack@worldpointinc.com.

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