COMPUTER CHINCHAT
From Vince Chin
Even at my ripe old age of 40, I still get excited about new technology
and computers. In those long-gone days of the early 70s, my old school,
the Sacred Heart Secondary School, Camberwell never had computers,
although if they had I can guarantee I'd have been a complete computer
nerd.
The exciting new technology I'm talking about is ADSL,
otherwise known as BroadBand with always-on Internet access at speeds of
10, 20 or 40 times faster than your analogue modem. But I must warn you
that the service availability is dependant upon your locality and
technology of the exchange, although as of 1st August Btopenworld has
extended the service to reach more than 90% of the UK population. You can
look at Btopenworld's website which is located at HERE
The service I subscribed to was Business 500, but I ordered 5
extra Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, meaning that I can have four extra
PCs on the service all with their own unique IP address. But what does it
really mean to the uninitiated? It means that for a monthly fee - mine is
£99 +VAT - you have always-connected, fast 500 Kbps download, 250 Kbps
upload with no extra call charges. And, you can still use the existing
line for normal phone calls. Whilst you are connected, you have two
ports...
But you don't have to pay the high cost that I do. I've heard
there's a special deal for DaC drivers whereby BT waive the cost of
installation, that's £150 for the Home 500 service which would suit most
drivers. The Home 500 service provides 1 PC with always on connection of
500Kbps with a small monthly charge of £39.99 +VAT and no extra Internet
call charges.
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I interrogated the BT engineer when he installed my Broadband
service with the main question relating to Contention Ratio, i.e. how many
people you share the connection with. Btopenworld say that the Home 500
has a contention ratio of 50 to 1, whereas my Business 500 has 20 to 1.
The BT Engineer stated otherwise, his argument was that each service goes
over the normal telephone wires that connect direct to the exchange, so in
theory there is no contention ratio. Now I'm not a network engineer, but
his argument did seem valid.
The monthly fee to always-on connection is the future, but
what has it meant to my family and me? My kids can now browse the web and
send loads of emails without the worry of lengthy call charges, but I've
had to install software firewalls on all the PCs, that is until I
understand how I can use a hardware version.
Instead of Napster...?
With the demise of Napster, what is everyone using to share
music? Currently my favourite is WinMX located at http://www.winmx.com.
This utility is very similar to Napster, but with the advantage of
searching for movies, images, or whatever. Excellent when you've a
Broadband connection. But please don't use it, as the more who know of it
means the sooner it will close down...!
Be Lucky and see you next month...
Vince Chin
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