September 2008
English 111

How High Speed Internet Connections Have Changed My Life

I was four years old when I first used a computer. It was a 486 (with turbo!) that ran Microsoft Windows 3.1. Ever since then I have been fascinated with computers and all things related to them. When I was in elementary school my parents ordered dial-up internet. For the first time I could communicate with other people using only a computer. In the 4th grade I didn’t really understand the full implications of what this new technology was allowing me to do, I simply thought that it was “really cool.” I began using a service called “AOL Instant Messenger” and was soon reading up on the latest technology news on informative websites. I didn’t know what all of it meant (there were lots of big words), but I found it fascinating.

In the 8th grade I received a homework assignment from my English teacher to write a persuasive paper and then show it to my parents. Compelling them to upgrade our internet connection to Verizon DSL seemed like the perfect thing to write about. My father liked my essay so much that he ordered DSL that week. The difference in what I could do with a computer was amazing. It was now possible to download entire works of software in the time it took to send a large email before. This was a radical shift for me to adjust to.

In the days of dial up, downloading a new program to run on my computer was a large decision. A new messaging client would take anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours to download, and we were only allotted 20 hours per month. I learned the art of multitasking for this very reason. It was a common occurrence to open up fifteen different windows in Internet Explorer and as soon as they had all completed loading disconnect from the internet to save connection time. I would then spend thirty minutes reading the pages that had been downloaded, close them, reconnect and then start over again. This happened countless times. Downloading software to simply “try it out” was unthinkable for me, it was simply too time consuming.

After DSL was installed my perception of what a computer connected to the internet could do was radically altered. My computer could now download software that I wanted to try, use VoIP technology to talk to someone in another state for free, become part of a cluster computer and search for aliens, help find a cure for cancer, and even download an entire operating system all in a single evening. It blew my mind. The vast resource of information that was and is the internet was available to me no matter what time of day or night it was. But like an addicting drug soon it wasn’t enough to satisfy me. Sure, I could do all of these great things on my 768kbs DSL line that was almost 14 times faster than the old 56kbs dial up, but the school internet was capable of downloading at almost 10,000kbs! I would hang around after classes were over at high school in order to take advantage of their extremely fast internet connection that was no longer being used. It was laborious to transfer things on CDs and Zip disks between school and my home, although it seemed to work well enough.

Towards the end of my senior year in high school I got it in my head that I would get a business grade internet connection for my own personal use at home. It would be expensive, of course, but I deemed it worth the cost. And how right I was. After the cable connection was installed I was downloading things at an incredible pace. It seemed almost identical to the shift in speed from dial up to DSL. It was literally an order of magnitude faster. Just as before a it was possible to do something in ten minutes that had taken hours on the older connection. Once again I no longer had to worry about downloading things ahead of time or rationing my use. I even began earning money off of the internet connection by hosting my own website. In addition to all of this I was learning so much more about how computers communicate. I’ve decided that I want to focus on large scale computer networking. Without a high speed internet connection none of this would have been possible. Even this paper that I am writing right now would have had to have been written on a different computer if there was no such thing as high speed internet. My productivity has skyrocketed as has my ability to earn money from computers. High speed internet has changed and improved my life in radical ways.

What are the odds of the following: My friend and I doing major upgrades to my home network and then 30 minutes later Cox upgrading their systems to support higher speeds and killing my connection. The total downtime for my website amounts to 3 hours.

Seriously, this happened.

When I was frantically running around my house at 1am trying to get the website back online I eventually wound up disconnecting everything and connecting my laptop directly to the cable modem. I was able to connect. I thought that was odd and so I decided to run a speed test. The results: 30mbs download and 2.5 mbs upload. The download speed was almost as high as a DS3. That’s insane. After two hours of troubleshooting the internet connection once again cooperated with my LAN and business as usual resumed. (so much for getting my normal amount of sleep).

What I figured happened is that Cox rolled out updates to their infrastructure once again without so much as a warning email. This is the second time this has happened to me. The upgrades aren’t the issue, it’s the fact that they don’t tell anyone that irritates me. My connections speeds (after I burn out the ‘power boost’) is a very healthy 10mbs down and 2 mbs down (aka exactly what I am paying for).

I’m now going to call it a night and let my body rest so I can wake up sometime tomorrow (morning?).