LIFE IN CYBERSPACE COMPUTERS IN THE ^90s When It's No-Delivery on E-mail -- Joshua Quittner, Newsda

[David Farber <>]

PUBLICATION DATE      Tuesday. May 10, 1994
HEADLINE              LIFE IN CYBERSPACE
                      COMPUTERS IN THE ^90s
                      When It's No-Delivery on E-mail
BYLINE                Joshua Quittner, Newsday Staff Writer
LENGTH                83   Lines
SERIES                LIFE IN CYBERSPACE


  I GET E-MAIL EVERY DAY through a thing called a dial-up account. It's
  really just a local phone number for a computer on the Internet that my
  computer can call; through it, I can send and receive all the e-mail I
  want, for $25 a month.
     I can call whenever I want, as often as I want, and I do. It's like a
  nervous habit. It feels like having a cup of coffee; it punctuates my
  day.
     Now last Wednesday, by 10:30 a.m., I had called my local dial-up a
  dozen times, without any luck. It didn't work and I wasn't getting my
  e-mail. I'd dial my dial-up and instead of seeing a reassuring message
  purring across my computer screen ("RECEIVING D.newsdauqkuh3 at 1:32:24
  PM on Tuesday, May 3, 1994") I'd get something ugly, something scary
  ("START MASTER TOSS").
     I was frantic, thinking of all the important messages that were
  addressed to me  -  quit () newsday com  -  that would change my life,
  buzzing out there in cyberspace, just beyond my reach. I hate that. But
  it happens from time to time. Usually, I hang up and try again in a few
  minutes, or an hour, and whatever caused it has been repaired.
       But when I called the Internet gateway I use, figuring to kill some
  time by hopping out over the Net to the WELL, in Sausalito, Calif., that
  didn't work, either.
     Something was seriously awry in cyberspace.
     I called my friend Stacy Horn, who runs the East Coast Hang Out, an
  Internet gateway in Manhattan. Horn said that her users had been having
  Net problems for a few days, and it was maddening. "You know what it's
  like not getting your e-mail," she said. "The worst possible thing is
  not getting your e-mail."
     She had called Sprint, which sells Echo its Internet pipeline. A
  customer service representative told her that the problem was with CIX,
  on the West Coast. CIX is a coalition of 13 regional commercial networks
  that interconnect to carry the daily communications of non-government,
  non-academic people.
     This made as much sense to Horn as it did to me. In other words, it
  made no sense. Why would a West Coast network problem affect New York?
  She decided to call Sprint back.
     Meanwhile, I called David Farber, a computer science professor at the
  University of Pennsylvania and telecommunications expert. I always play
  Sherman to Farber's Mister Peabody; Farber knows everything about the
  Net, and since he's a professor, he's ethically bound to answer any
  question, no matter how dumb.
     "Talk to me about outages on the Internet," I said.
     "The nice thing about networks is you're geographically insulated
  from having to know how things route," he said. "But that can sometimes
  bite you because when something goes wrong, you have no idea who in the
  world to blame." In other words, the problem could be with your PC, your
  software, your telephone connection to your local Internet provider, the
  provider's Internet connection to the CIX, the long-haul leased lines
  that carry data . . . and on and on.
     Farber said that to a certain degree, even plain-old telephone users
  are plagued by this problem. In the old days, when your phone didn't
  work, you knew who to blame: AT&T. This isn't true today.
     So what does that say about the future of the Internet? How will the
  Internet continue to grow if it's so unreliable? One day it works, and
  the next day, it doesn't.
     "The Net is still young. What will happen is, people will demand
  service," Farber said. "And there will be an economic incentive for
  people to supply service." The networks that make up the Internet will
  develop better procedures for troubleshooting.
     "It will either get better or we'll have a very empty information
  superhighway," Farber said.
     Stacy called back to tell me that Sprint was blaming a competitor,
  Performance Systems International, for the problem. That made some
  sense, since my dial-up account comes from PSI, too. I called PSI.
     A helpful customer service person in Albany confirmed that the
  problem was on a circuit board in PSI's network, in Manhattan. He
  predicted it would take an hour or two to fix it, unless "we have to
  replace the board in New York City. Then we'd have to send someone down
  from Albany." That could take many hours.
     A life spent waiting for e-mail is a life not worth living. I
  contemplated my options: coffee (had some), snail mail (I dread paper
  cuts) and working (hah, good one.) I tried the dial-up again. It worked.
     The words, "RECEIVING D.newsdaurzx3 at 11:47:12 AM on Wednesday, May
  4, 1994," gurgled across my screen.
     I read my first message. It was from someone I didn't know, someone
  who was a bad speller:
     "Joshua,
     "I would greatly appreciate it if you were to find out the Internet
  address of Steven Spielburg. I believe he should have a PC, and an
  Internet address," it began. "I want to send some script ideas to him
  for one of the shows he produces. To be more precise, I want to try to
  send mail to Warner Brothers Studios (the animation department). Do you
  think you can get me some addresses there??? Pleez!!? I would be greatly
  gradified."
     You can see why e-mail is so important to me.