Amy, thread, pretty good article in today's San Jose Mercury News Computing section on internet access options today. One paragraph points out that your computer is another important factor in determining loading speed off the web. Good exposure because the Mercury News has a big distribution in the most important high tech area in the world. Boy, that sounds impressive, doesn't it?
One other important factor in determining speed is the user's computer. Your
3-year-old PC with an early version of the Intel Pentium processor won't load
Web pages nearly as fast as this year's models, which can better take advantage
of a high-speed connection.
sjmercury.com
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Personal Computing
A SPECIAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS REPORT
Posted at 9:34 p.m. PST Saturday, March 27, 1999
Cable, phone rivals heat
up market for swift Net
access
BY JON HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
THE World Wide Web is a well-stocked stream if
you're fishing for information, but a common phone
line and a dial-up modem make for slow trolling.
That's why avid computer users have longed for a
way to cut the time spent idling, waiting for the CNN
Web site to appear on their screens or the ''Star
Wars'' movie trailer to download. Many were
introduced to high-speed connections at the office, but
couldn't afford such luxuries at home.
Thanks to a new rivalry between phone and cable TV
companies, though, the price of ultra-fast connections
has plummeted in a growing number of communities.
In parts of the Bay Area, consumers can make a great
leap forward in speed for $40 to $60 a month, or two
to three times the price of a standard dial-up
connection.
These services, known as ''cable modems'' and
''digital subscriber lines,'' aren't just faster. They
open up a world where the Internet's treasure trove of
news, information and entertainment is as handy as a
phone book and as vivid as television.
The two approaches carry similar price tags, and both let users stay constantly
connected to the Internet without tying up a phone line. The most noteworthy
differences are in the way they deliver high speeds, the window they provide
into the Internet and the restrictions they impose on users.
In the long run, though, their goal is the same: to sell not only a fast pipeline, but
also a new and richer world of information.
Both the phone-line and cable services can be significantly faster than a dial-up
modem, which can take minutes to display some of the more elaborate Web
sites. But just how fast you'll go depends on a slew of variables, making it
impossible to say definitively that cable modems are faster or slower than
high-speed phone lines.
Speed
Which is fastest? Well, it depends
In a cable-modem system, the top speeds can be more than 45 times what the
best dial-up connection can provide. Speeds fluctuate, however, because users
share capacity on the wires between them and the network's central point, or
''head end.'' It's like a corporate computer network in that sense, with speeds
varying according to how many other people are using the network and what
they're doing.
If it's just a bunch of people surfing the Web and reading e-mail, connection
speeds should remain high. Speeds will drop, though, if half the neighborhood
decides to download the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
The high-speed phone service, by contrast, gives each user a dedicated
connection to the network's central point that's seven to 29 times faster than the
speediest dial-up modem. The connection speed shouldn't rise or fall with the
number of users in the neighborhood; instead, it depends mainly on the distance
between the subscriber and the central office and the amount of interference on
his or her line.
Still, both types of ultra-fast connections hasten only a portion of your trip to
and from the Internet. You'll still have to share the lines between the central
phone or cable office and your Internet provider, from your provider to the
Internet, and from the Internet to the Web site you're trying to view. In each of
those places you can lose speed as the traffic lanes get crowded.
ISP options
You choose or they choose
An important factor here is your Internet provider.
With phone-line service, you can choose among several Internet providers
whose rates range from $10 to $200 per month. The higher-priced offers,
generally speaking, promise you less potential congestion and more features.
With the cable-modem service, however, all customers have to use the Internet
provider chosen by the cable operator. For Tele-Communications Inc., which is
changing its name to AT&T Broadband and Internet Services, that's @Home
Corp. of Redwood City, and for other Bay Area cable companies it's ISP
Channel of San Francisco. Customers can sign up for a second or third Internet
provider, but their traffic still passes through the cable operator's hand-picked
Internet company.
@Home has been criticized by some users for occasional slowdowns,
problems that TCI and @Home have blamed on botched or ill-timed upgrades
and users running unauthorized, capacity-hogging services out of their homes.
The two companies' chief technologists, Tony Werner at AT&T Broadband and
Milo Medin at @Home, insist that a properly managed cable network has more
than enough capacity to keep customers going at high speed.
PC World magazine recently did a speed test that matched TCI's $40-per-month
@Home service in Antioch against one of Pacific Bell's more expensive,
business-oriented services -- an ultra-fast line that costs $199 per month -- and
a similar, $345-per-month service from Covad Communications of San Jose
and Direct Network Access of Berkeley. The cable modem outperformed the
high-speed phone lines in every test, although the difference was usually
minute. For example, downloading a 2 megabyte file (about 74 pages of text)
took 38 seconds via cable modem, 39 seconds via Pac Bell and 49 seconds via
Covad.
The results would almost certainly be different on other cable systems, as the
number of users varies from community to community. Also, Pac Bell's $199
service comes with a higher guaranteed connection speed than its $49
consumer-oriented service -- about four times as fast for most customers.
Cable-modem customers served by the ISP Channel's consumer-oriented
service probably would not fare as well in the tests because its maximum
downloading speed is capped at 500 kilobits per second, or about 10 times the
rate of the fastest dial-up connection.
One other important factor in determining speed is the user's computer. Your
3-year-old PC with an early version of the Intel Pentium processor won't load
Web pages nearly as fast as this year's models, which can better take advantage
of a high-speed connection.
Data services
Web gateways rich in video, animation
The clearest difference between the high-speed services is the introduction they
provide to the Web.
@Home has constructed an elaborate Web gateway site that's a one-stop source
for news, Web searching, local events and schedules, productivity tools,
financial and entertainment information, online games, kids' programming and
sports highlights.
Other sites aim for this kind of breadth, but none yet matches @Home in
showing off the advantages of a high-speed connection.
The @Home site is awash in video clips, animation, streaming audio and large
color graphics. For example, there are news and sports video clips from CNN
and financial headlines on video from the Bloomberg news service, as well as
a wide selection of Internet radio stations. That's a sharp contrast to the
text-dominated sites offered by such popular Web sites as Yahoo, Excite and
Lycos.
Pac Bell's Internet arm recently started offering its high-speed customers a new
site from Snap.com, an affiliate of NBC, that's geared to fast connections. It's
mainly a directory to the Web, leading users to other sites -- particularly those
that offer video or audio clips. It offers a limited amount of video on its own
site, much of it coming from affiliate MSNBC.
@Home, on the other hand, provides more of this material on its own site. And
to help subscribers download this and other popular Web sites at top speed, it
puts copies in regional data centers near each cable system. That way, visitors
to these sites can avoid the congestion on the public Internet.
It also goes further than other sites in providing a guided tour of the Web. There
are about five dozen ''How do I'' segments showing how to find phone numbers
on the Web, for instance, or how to buy a book online.
Neither @Home's nor Snap's site gives users much ability to tailor its features
to their needs and tastes. @Home is buying Excite, however, and plans to
incorporate Excite's personalization technology into the next version of its
software, said Richard Gingras, an @Home vice president. Gingras acts as
editor-in-chief to the 30 to 35 people who produce and edit material for
@Home's site.
The ISP Channel relies on Excite for its ''portal,'' and Excite has yet to come up
with a version tailored to high-speed users.
The initial customers for cable modems and high-speed phone lines have
largely been veteran Web surfers who don't need much help finding their way
around the Internet or changing the first site they visit when they fire up their
browser. But Gingras predicted that the packaged content provided by
companies like his will become increasingly important as more inexperienced
users sign up for high-speed service.
Restrictions
Services put limits on subscriber usage
Both @Home and Pac Bell stress that their lowest-cost services are for
residential users, not businesses. @Home puts more detailed restrictions on
subscribers, though, in an effort to keep its network unclogged.
For example, it bars subscribers from providing services to third parties, such
as hosting an electronic discussion group or making data files available
remotely. Jerry Gardner, a longtime, satisfied @Home customer from San
Ramon, said the restrictions are a good indication of the company's attitude.
''In my view, @Home is striving to become the AOL (America Online) of the
cable business,'' Gardner said. ''They do not, and do not desire to, cater to the
more advanced users who want to set up servers and custom domain names.
They're catering to Joe Sixpack, who's only interest is surfing the Web.''
Pac Bell is more inviting to telecommuters, but its lowest-price service doesn't
allow users to transmit data very fast -- the limit is 128 kilobits per second,
about four times the fastest dial-up connection. To limit congestion, @Home
has started imposing the same cap on customers, beginning in Fremont.
Both TCI and Pac Bell require customers to pay an extra monthly fee and obtain
additional Internet addresses if they wish to hook up more than one computer to
their modems. But according to several users, Pac Bell has taken a see-no-evil
approach to customers who run a small home computer network behind a single
Internet address.
The catch is, consumers who set their computers to allow file-sharing on the
home networks could be giving the rest of the Internet an open look into their
hard drives. @Home cautions its customers about this problem, but Pac Bell
doesn't in every case.
Some users say that people with continuous, high-speed connections to the
Internet ought to go further and use a firewall -- an electronic barrier, provided
by either software or a separate PC, between the user's computer and the
Internet. That's because many hackers focus on computers with high-speed
connections, and those with a fixed Internet address may be easier targets for
attack.
David Goldman, a telecommunications consultant in Redwood City, said the
average user probably isn't a prime target because ''there's really nothing juicy
or worthwhile on most single machines that people have at home.'' The key
question, he said, is whether your data is valuable enough to justify the extra
expense of a firewall, which costs upward of $40.
Customer care
Solving a problem can take a while
Because high-speed phone lines and cable modems are relatively new, users
may feel like they're on the bleeding edge of technology.
A number of TCI @Home subscribers have complained about spending 30
minutes or longer on hold when they call customer service. And Pac Bell's new
service has given rise to numerous horror stories about botched installations
that take days, not hours, to complete.
Both companies are bulking up their staff of installers and customer-service
agents. They're also trying to make it easier for people to solve technical
problems on their own, rather than having to call for help.
Mike McLeland, vice president of business service operations at Pac Bell, said
the vast majority of problems reported by high-speed customers stem from
breakdowns within their computers, not the network. What the company wants
to do, he said, is develop software for customers' PCs that will help them
identify and fix such problems themselves.
@Home officials say they are pursuing a similar self-help strategy. But the
company is still learning how people use -- and abuse -- the network and the
kinds of problems they encounter, Gingras said.
''We're guinea pigs, too,'' he added. ''No one's created a network like this.''
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