Traffic Jam on the 'Net
Everyone in Port
Charlotte knows when the snowbirds are in town. The number
of cars and vans on Tamiami Trail skyrockets. Traffic moves slower,
delays are longer, and collisions are much more frequent. However, I
can tell when the season is in full swing without driving anywhere. I
simply try to sign onto the Internet.
Unless
I sign on my Internet Service Provider, or ISP, early in the
day, I get a busy signal most of the time. I can count on slower line
speeds and more "knockoffs" when I finally do access the
Internet. What is happening? More traffic.
The snowbirds are
bringing their PCs with them. What used to be a
10- minute long distance call to the kids is now an hour and a half
of surfing the net and checking e-mail. How about the year round
residents? Yes, they too have found the Internet. With the arrival
in the last year or so of Office Depot and now Circuit City, to
compete with the established Staples, the average walk in consumer
has a myriad of selections and prices of PCs from which to choose.
There have always been
many good, smaller PC computer shops and offices around, but they
simply don't have the marketing clout of the big name retailers. The
large retailers have been offering "almost free" (read the
fine print) name brand PCs with I three-year obligations to a
specific ISP. They have been selling like hot cakes.
As a result, the local
concentrator sites for ISP access to the Internet are swamped. The
telephone line that starts inside your house ends up in the local
switching offices. When you pick up the receiver, you complete a
basic circuit back to the office that says your
telephone just went off hook, and you want to connect to
somebody. The system connects your line to a dialing facility and
gives you back a basic response that says "dial tone:' You are
now ready to input the routing information by dialing the number. So
far so good. If that number you dialed isn't already connected, then
you get to connect to that port, and the phone you are calling rings.
Of course. what really happens is far more technical than all that,
and it all happens in microseconds.
Unfortunately, there are
only so many lines and numbers. When there are more requests for
connections than there are facilities, the infamous fast busy signal
is returned to your telephone. Wait a few moments and try again.
Hopefully, someone will hang up and you can get
in.
The
snowbirds certainly aren't going to stop corning. After all, we spend
huge sums of money to make sure they return year after year. The
problem seems to be the conviction that the area
isn't going to grow enough to sustain the expansion of
facilities during the off season. There are
alternatives to the telephone access to the Internet, such as cable
modems and even special satellite dishes. which unfortunately still
require a telephone connection. For the average consumer, POTS
(plain 1 old telephone service) is the only workable solution.
If the roads aren't upgraded, the traffic jams
will get worse.
The
same with your telephone. Our area is definitely growing and
expanding. More and more of our seasonal visitors are here
year-round. They are harder to spot because they just change license
plates.
George Mindling ©
2000
