ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611160009
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Computers
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
Congestion has arrived on the Internet, sometimes slowing the network to a crawl and frustrating users.
That news has found its way recently into daily headlines but has been known for a while by people who use the Internet or who read about it in technology magazines.
In some more populated regions, Internet usage has grown to the degree that local telephone companies say it's interfering with their ability to complete phone calls. People generally connect their computers to the Internet over local phone lines; because Internet phone calls typically last much longer than traditional calls, they tie up more of the capacity of phone company equipment.
According to a recent survey in Internet World magazine, the size of the Internet worldwide doubled from 6.6 million hosts in mid-1995 to 12.8 million hosts by the middle of this year. A host is a site on the Internet that can be visited by an Internet user. The magazine, however, said there is no good figure available for total Internet users. Estimates range from 9 million to 35 million users in the United States alone.
Traffic jams created by increased traffic on the information highway have provided the impetus, in part, behind a recent agreement among 34 major research universities, including Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, to create a new national educational network that will be much faster than the existing Internet.
The fact that people generally pay a flat rate for unlimited Internet access probably contributes to the congestion. Internet users have no economic incentive, as do those making long-distance phone calls, to get on line, take care of business and then get off before the charges get too high.
Telephone companies say a per-minute charge for Internet use is needed both to control abuse of their networks by Internet users and to help pay for improvements.
Bell Atlantic Corp. thinks it's appropriate that Internet service providers pay some kind of access charge for calls to their service, said company spokesman Paul Miller. Although congestion hasn't interfered with local phone traffic yet, Bell Atlantic has experienced tremendous loads in some parts of its service area, particularly in Northern Virginia where America Online is based, Miller said.
The company has been receiving large orders for additional phone lines, many of them going to computers, Miller said. ISDN lines, digital high-speed lines, also have become more popular with homeowners, he said. "We're keeping up with the growth but it's a large job," he said.
A Bell Atlantic study earlier this year showed that people using the phone to reach the Internet typically stay on line for at least 18 minutes and often for an hour or more, Miller said. By contrast, he said a typical voice call lasts from three to five minutes. The heaviest period of Internet usage falls after 10 p.m. while the heaviest traditional phone usage is between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., Miller said.
Those involved with the Internet in the Roanoke area say they haven't seen the congestion problems that have been reported in larger metropolitan areas but they are concerned about the effects of growth in the Internet and foresee changes for Internet users.
"My feeling is that Internet service providers will probably have to pay more than they're paying now for access to telephone networks," said Allen Layman, president of R&B Communications Inc. of Daleville. R&B provides both telephone service and Internet access among other services to consumers.
The increase in access charges, which Internet providers will pass on to consumers, probably will come next year after the Federal Communications Commission takes up the issue of access charges for long-distance phone companies, Layman said. If the FCC lowers access charges, as expected, for long-distance providers, local phone rates, which have historically been subsidized by the long-distance business, will have to increase, he said.
Jim Newell, general manager of the Citizens Telephone Co-op in Floyd, said the packaging and pricing of Internet services are likely to be changed but he couldn't predict just how because of all the uncertainty created by the increased competition within the telecommunications industry.
"There's no free lunch," Newell said, "and over time somebody is going to have to pay for this Internet access." Citizens provides phone services as well as Internet service over phone lines and through satellite television.
Congestion on the Internet from the user's viewpoint can take different forms. One common source of the problem is with local access providers who operate modem pools through which consumers dial up for access. If the provider doesn't offer enough modems, users frequently get busy signals when they dial in.
The simplest solution to that problem, says Andrew Cohill, director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village, is to find a better service provider. Phone companies and others, he said, are beginning to roll out affordable alternative ways to access the Internet. Those include ISDN, which uses standard phone lines; high-speed cable television modems; and wireless television and satellite television Internet connections.
Congestion on the main long-distance Internet links around the country, commonly referred to as "pipes," has been a motivating factor in the agreement among the nation's top research universities to build a new high-speed network, dubbed "Internet II."
Virginia's portion of that new network, called Network Virginia, already is in the works, Cohill said. It will link all agencies and colleges and universities in the state at speeds three to 10 times faster than the Internet.
As for the Internet, itself, it will do just fine, Cohill said. The Internet is crossing the hurdles common to any new industry and will become more settled as a higher percentage of the public comes on line, he said.
"Prices may go up temporarily but the Internet is here to stay," Cohill said.
LENGTH: Long : 104 linesby CNB