From crispen@INTERNIC.NET Sun Feb 8 00:37:24 1998
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 00:00:35 -0500
From: crispen@INTERNIC.NET
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: TOURBUS -- 29 JANUARY 1998 -- MORE HIGH SPEED ADVENTURES
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): MORE HIGH SPEED ADVENTURES
TODAY'S TOURBUS URLS:
http://www.ricochet.net/
http://www.kne.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0119/19channel.html
http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
Howdy, y'all! :)
We have a _lot_ to talk about today, so let's get today's tour underway.
Today's journey of our little bus of Internet happiness is being sponsored
by the nice folks at SimpleNet. Believe me when I tell you that when
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On with the show. It looks like your fearless bus driver forgot to mention
wireless modems last week. Alert TOURBUS rider J. Katherine Rossner points
out that
In the [San Francisco] Bay Area ... there's my former ISP,
Ricochet, which uses wireless modems! Transmitters all over
town, and so on. Not as fast as one would like--last year I was
lucky to get a 28.8 connection occasionally--but no busy signals
and (most important by far) connection pretty much 24/7 without
tying up *any* phone lines--and for $30/month plus $10/month for
modem rental.
You can find out more about Ricochet on the Web at
http://www.ricochet.net/
Right now, Ricochet's wireless modem access is only available in the San
Francisco Bay area, the Seattle area, and Washington D.C. (the United
States Congress apparently is still debating a resolution that would extend
"area" status to D.C.). Ricochet access is also available in a couple
mega-airports like Baltimore-Washington (BWI), National (DCA), Los Angeles
(LAX), and New York - Laguardia (NYC), and a company called KN Energy
(http://www.kne.com/) offers similar wireless modem access in mega-prairies
like Nebraska and Wyoming.
A few TOURBUS riders also asked me to point out that while DSS (digital
satellite system) and cable modem Internet connections allow you download
files from the Internet quite quickly, you still have to use your plain old
modem and telephone line to be able to upload files to the Net. In other
words, DSS and cable modems give you quick downloads, but you're still
stuck with a slow modem connection for your uploads. If you are like most
people, you probably don't upload much (other than your POP mail), so this
restriction won't be all that troublesome. For Net wonks like me who like
uploading things like multiple copies of the Manhattan telephone directory
(in Postscript), this restriction would be deadly.
Finally, several riders wanted to know how my roommates and I were able to
connect the three computers in our apartment to one dual-channel ISDN line.
The answer is that we pulled all of our money together and purchased a
combination terminal adapter and four port ethernet hub (specifically a
"Trancell WebRamp Entre'"). The cool thing is that this lets our entire
apartment share a single account with our local ISP (DB Technology) and a
single, dual-channel ISDN line through our local telephone company
(BellSouth). The only bad part about this is that the terminal
adapter/router wasn't all that cheap -- in fact, it cost us over US$500.
But, splitting that cost between all 4 roommates made it a LOT cheaper (the
individual cost was pretty close to what we each received from selling back
our textbooks at the end of last semester).
By the way, there may be yet another high speed Internet access option to
consider. Henry Daniels wrote to me to tell me about something called
"channel aggregation." To be honest, I haven't had time to follow up on
this, but here is what Mr. Daniels wrote:
I don't know if anyone told you about the 1-19-98 edition of PC
week. In the Netweek section on page 89 there is an article on
"Channel aggregation" and in short it gives you a little better
speed on the net by using two regular modems and two analog phone
lines. Granted it's not the best for everyone but it is an
option for me especially with the outrageous $100 /month plus per
minute charges that US West hits you with on ISDN not to mention
the additional charges that the ISP will get you with. There is
more detail in the article including using multiple computers to
access the net through one connection (granted it would get
slower) and the more details.
You can find the article that Mr. Daniels is referring to online at
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0119/19channel.html
With all that said, I realize that there are probably a few of you [in the
back of the bus] who couldn't care less about the different ways that you
can access the Internet from home. That's cool. If you fall into this
category, I promise you that our next (and final) stop for the day has
_NOTHING_ to do with home Internet access ...
-------------------------
HOBBES' INTERNET TIMELINE
-------------------------
I have yet another URL for you to add to your "I really need to visit this
URL someday when I get the time" folder. [I have one of those folders too
... the last time I checked, I have 69 sites that I still need to visit.]
Anyway, if you are looking for the definitive chronology of events in the
development of the Internet over the past 41 years (yes, I said 41 ...
you'll have to visit today's site to see what Internet-related event
happened in 1957), you really need to check out Robert H'obbes' Zakon's
"Hobbes Internet Timeline" at
http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
The timeline is impressively complete. In fact, it even includes an entry
for the first "Internet Hunt" that Rick Gates held back in 1992.
Unfortunately, there are a few minor omissions:
1992 - Patrick Crispen gets an e-mail account so that he can send
messages to his father, the Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen, asking
him for money.
1992 - Patrick Crispen receives his first e-mail message, a
letter from his father instructing him to "get a job."
1993-4 - "Navigating the Internet" and "Let's Go Gopherin'"
workshops conducted by Richard Smith [no, this isn't meant
to be funny ... not including Smith's "Navigating" in the
timeline is a pretty serious omission.]
1994-5 - Finally giving up hope of ever convincing his father to
send him money, Patrick Crispen conducts the Roadmap
workshops.
1995 - The Internet TOURBUS is introduced by Patrick Crispen and
Dr. Bob Rankin.
That's it for this week. Have a safe and happy weekend, and if you are a
TOURBUS Plus! subscriber be looking for another post from me this weekend.
:)
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): MORE HIGH SPEED ADVENTURES
TODAY'S TOURBUS URLS:
http://www.ricochet.net/
http://www.kne.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0119/19channel.html
http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
--------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
YALE (verb). To exclaim.
Usage: An Auburn University graduate is talking to a friend about his
beautiful wife. The Aubie asks, "where did your wife go to school?" The
other guy responded, "Yale." To which the Aubie replied, quite loudly,
"Okay ... WHERE DID YOUR WIFE GO TO SCHOOL?!?!?!?!"
(Special thanks to June Hollis for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/word.html
=--------------------------------------------------------------------=
For info on my book "Atlas for the Information Superhighway"
Visit http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/atlas.html
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=====================================================================
.~~~. ))
(\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen
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