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It's on television, in magazines, newspapers, and in our schools. Everywhere you go you hear about the Internet. Dubbed "The Information Superhighway, " one might think that this network of millions of computers around the globe is as fast and as captivating as television, but with more and more users logging on everyday and staying on longer and longer, this "Information Superhighway" could be perhaps more correctly referred to as a clogged Los-Angeles expressway at lunch hour. Users are often frustrated at busy signals and slow speeds. The corporate giant, America Online, Inc, has recently been the target of several lawsuits over this because when it changed it's pricing plan, so many new users came on, and so many people started staying on longer, that it's system couldn't handle the strain and would run very slow and give busy signals to almost everyone that tried to log on. As a result people started staying online because they were afraid that if they logged off, they would never get back on.
This forced America Online to upgrade enormous amounts of equipment, lease new telephone lines, and issue commercials apologizing for the whole predicament. They even started giving refunds to users who were never able to get on during the troubled ordeal. Some people are predicting, because of the length of Internet calls and the amount of bandwidth the calls take, that one day in the not so distant future, the entire telephone network, or at least a great portion of it, will cease to function, and all telephone calls will fail to connect. This idea is referred to by some as the "Gridlock Theory. " Others advise that steps can be taken to avoid such a disaster, such as upgrading phone lines and limiting Internet usage. Following the gridlock idea is Ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe, who believes that the slowdowns will only get worse. "We recently had an outage... (that) denied 400, 00 people access to the Internet, in its entirety, for thirteen hours. I expect even worse cases to develop this year. " (Hunter, the Internet. ) It is estimated that twenty-five to thirty million users currently are on the Internet.
According to a recent study by Pacific Bell, and average Internet call lasts five times as longer as the average regular telephone call. 10 percent of the Internet calls last 6 hours or longer. This can cause switches to overload and, in turn, cause telephone calls to fail. (Firdman, page 14. ) Internet services take up 2. 5 percent of the telephone lines in America, and they are using twenty to to thirty-six percent of the total telephone network capacity. "The local network was designed for short calls which you make and then hang up, but Internet calls often occupy a line for hours, " said David Good tree, an industry analyst. (Reuter's, the Internet. ) With so many people on the Internet and the number growing by 200 percent annually, it certainly provides new challenges for the telephone companies, but the real problem is the amount of bandwidth, which is how much information a telephone line can carry, that Internet calls take up versus regular voice telephone calls. (Fenton, page 41. ) The Internet, up to a few years ago, was used only to read text. Then in the early 90 's, a way was made to see pictures and sound on the Internet. This breakthrough is what started the Internet craze that is still going on today. Today's Net, however, is much more than pictures, text, and sound.
The Internet is now filled with voice conversation, video conferencing, and video games. With voice conversation, users can talk back and forth over the Internet, even across seas, for the price of the local phone call they make to the Internet. Telephone companies are arguing with the Federal Communications Commission that these services are a threat to their livelihood and that it should be stopped, but the Commission has made no move to stop it yet. Video Conferencing allows the same thing, except that, if you have a camera hooked up to your computer, you can see the other person while you talk. To make matters worse, you no longe have to own a computer to access the Internet. Now, devices such as Web TV allow your television to browse the Web and use Electronic Mail.
Cellular phones are now also dialing up the Internet to provide E-mail and answering machine services. Needless to say, the telephone network was not designed and built to handle these sorts of things. Many telephone companies and even the United States government are spending enormous amounts of money to upgrade the telephone lines, but, because of the way the current telephone network was designed, the improvements can only go so far. K.
Kao and G. Hackman were the first to come up with the idea of using fibre optic cables, as opposed to copper wire, to carry telephone signals. Instead of sound, fibre optics uses pulses of light to transmit binary code, such as that used in computers and other electronic devices, through the lines. (Reid, page 52. ) Others besides the telephone companies are attempting to come up with solutions for the problem as well. Two companies that make modems, the device that allows a computer to connect to a phone line, have introduced faster models to satisfy the need for speed. (Fenton, page 43. ) Not to be outdone, cable companies are introducing Internet access in some places in America.
By accessing the 'Net through the coaxial cable that provides television to our homes, the speed can be increased 1, 000 fold. However, the cable system was built to only send information one way. In other words, they can send stuff to us, be we can't send anything back. This means that some of the cable infrastructure must be replaced in order for this idea to catch on. (Fenton, page 43 - 44. ) Yet another way is being introduced to access the Internet, and that is through the use of a satellite dish just like the DirecTV dishes currently used to deliver television from satellites in space to your home. However, like cable modems, the information can only be sent one way. Faster ways of connecting to the Internet may sound like a viable permanent solution to the problem, but, just as new lanes on highways attract more cars, a faster Internet could attract many times more users, making it even slower than before.
To help solve the problem of Internet clogs, access providers are trying new ways of pricing for customers. Whereas most have a flat rate of $ 19. 95 per month, some are combining this rate with extra charges for going over a set usage time. Others have started using a priority-based system where users who want better and faster access would pay more than those who just wanted to check and send E-mail for a while. Also, some users could pay for extra services. (Firdman, page 14. ) So, in conclusion, if we want to keep the Internet usable and fairly fast, we must not only improve the telephone lines and means of access, but also be reasonable in our usage.
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Research essay sample on Access The Internet Telephone Lines
