The Dependability of the Web by Nathan Redman A new age is upon us - the computer age. More specifically, the internet. There's no doubt that the internet has changed how fast and the way we communicate and get information.
The popularity of the net is rising at a considerable rate. Traffic, the number of people on the web, is four times what it was a year ago and every thirty seconds someone new logs on to the net to experience for themselves what everyone is talking about. Even Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, a company that really looks into the future in order to stay ahead of the competition, said the internet is one part of the computer business that he really underestimated. As one of the richest men in the world I doubt if he makes too many mistakes. Nobody could have predicted that the internet would expand at this rate and that's probably the reason why troubles are arising about the dependability of the web. As usage soars (some estimate there will be over eighty million users by the end of 1997) could the internet overload? Even though no one predicted the popularity of the net some are quick to foresee the downfall or doomsday of this fade.
If you call it a fade. The demand continues to rise and is now so great that technological improvements are continually needed to handle the burden that's been created from all of the people using the net. Their are many things that can lighten the load that's been slowing down the internet. First, it needs to have a lot better organization because with over seventy-five million web pages, and rising steadily fast, being able to pin-point the information you are trying to find is very difficult.
It's like finding a needle in a haystack. When you use a search engine to find information on a certain topic the search can come back with thousands upon thousands of pages or sites. Sometimes with over fifty-thousand. Now you have the never ending task of looking through each site to find what you want.
Plus, with links on most pages people can end up getting lost real fast and not being able to find their way back. Search engines should develop what I call the filter down affect. In the filter down affect a broad topic is chosen and then sub-topics are chosen continuously until the list of sites has narrowed the search to respectable sites and the information needed. Having better organization would remove some of the worthless sites around cyperspace from ending up first in the search engines results.
A second way to lighten the load of the internet is by improving the time it takes to load a page. The speed of loading a page depends greatly on the type of equipment, software, how much memory you have, your connection speed, plus a lot of other factors, but web page designers should make more text and less graphics, animation, and video because text takes a lot less time to load. According to an October 1996 survey by AT, sixty-seven percent of sites were " off the net" for at least on hour per day because of overload. The web wasn't designed to handle graphics, animation, audio, and video. It was first developed for E-mail (electronic mail) and transferring text files, but web page designers want their pages to look the best so that people or for in the case of business, potential customers, visit their site and are impressed by it so they come back in the future and tell others about the site.
After all, the best way to have people visit your web site is by word of mouth because it is very hard for people to find the site unless they happen to know the exact address. Sometimes though, popularity can kill a site. For instance, when the weather got bad in Minnesota one weekend the National Weather Service web site got overloaded with people wanting to read and see the current weather forecasts. The result was the server going down from the overload leaving nobody the ability to visit that site.
With more businesses seeing the dollar signs that the web could produce they compete for advertising on the web because it is much cheaper then advertising on television or the newspaper and it can reach people all the way around the world. Designers for these pages can't forget that surfers aren't willing to wait very long for pages to load so simplifying pages can make the web a lot faster. Another way to make things faster is to make sure that servers can handle the load applied to them. Internet providers want to make money just like all other businesses so they try fitting as many customers on to one server as they can. Putting less people on each server would create faster service. Also popular businesses or sites should have big enough capacities to handle the amount of people that visit.
Slow servers will lose a lot of business. Internet providers and businesses should look at future capacities and not just to current loads. As in the case of doomsday more and more fears of logging into cyberspace are beginning to receive attention. As mentioned above, speed is a major concern. Besides what is recommended, technological improvements need to be developed. For example, bigger pipelines (lines carrying computer data) like fiber optics and satellite transmission are receiving high ratings from people, but like all good things in life putting bigger pipelines in the ground takes a lot of time and money.
If the government or private industries are willing to lay the foundation for putting in faster lines it will change the world just like the railroad tracks in the 1800's. Another major fear of people on the superhighway of information is security. Hackers (people that get into data on computers they aren't suppose to) can hack into a lot of private information on the information superhighway. In reality it isn't any different then credit cards and valuables being stolen in the real world. Their is currently cybercops surfing the web looking for illegal happenings on the information superhighway. Patrolling the web is only one way to help put a stop to hackers.
Encrypting and making better security software needs to be developed along with other computer technology to help control hackers or cybercriminals. Theirs no denying the fact that the internet is very powerful in today's world. It combines text, audio, animation, video and graphics all in one and at the click of a button you can receive entertainment and news, communicate with people around the world, do your banking, reserve tickets, buy, sell and trade merchandise or collectibles, or even order dinner for the night. These are just a few things that can be accomplished on the net. People aren't only attracted to what the internet has to offer now but to what will be available in the near future.
Some day computers will replace our television, radio, answering machine, and telephone. Technology is developing so rapidly that things not even imaginable will be developed to make our lives easier but more confusing. After all, no one predicted where the net is today and how fast it would it would develop.
