As Much As We Depend on Ethernet and WiFi Networks

As Much As We Depend on Ethernet and WiFi Networks for Our Business, How Dependable Are They?

Most people who travel on business will admit as much. About the first thing they do when they are shown to their room at a hotel when on a business trip is, they check to see if the hotel's WiFi networks are working. If there is a bothersome Internet connection to be noticed, we rise up in indignatiom and threaten to check right out if the problem isn't straightened out. A WiFi connection, or at least a working Ethernet port is the very minimum we expect these days - it is a kind of fundamental need - like running water or electricity.

Or is it? It's getting so that if we have a dropped WiFi connection on board an airplane, it seems intolerable. Are working WiFi networks really a fundamental need? Or are we just hopelessly muddled by technology? Here's the thing; when people travel on business, they expect to be able to do business. Services like video conferencing and rocksolid e-mail are basic tools of the trade. You could complain that businessmen were just spoilt if they complained about a dropped connection chatting on Facebook. A working person complaining about how time is a-wasting because of stalled WiFi networks, would just be serious about his job. The realization that your entire job depends on really temperamental WiFi networks can sometimes be too much to take.

And temperamental, they all are. Consider what happened when Michael Jackson passed on a year ago. The world erupted in frenzied Internet activity, collecting information through Google, and passing it on through Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, and generally bringing the Internet to its knees. When AOL's services went down for nearly an hour that day, it was catastrophe. And businessmen who were working that day, had to set aside their laptops, and wait for it to play out. Salesman couldn't retrieve their sales data, doctors couldn't look up their online knowledge bases and computer repairman couldn't locate parts.

The world needs to pay more attention to what happens to the World Wide Web in the event of an occurrence of significance. If so much of the world depends on working ethernet and WiFi networks for their very survival, how could we afford to have everything brought to a standstill when Tom Cruise jumps up on Oprah's couch? Policymakers are ever concerned with Internet security, cyber attacks and the like. How about simple overwhelmed networks? In the event of a major catastrophe, a war, an earthquake, the people of the region would need to be able to stay in touch through the Internet; congestion cannot possibly be allowed to play havoc with such a basic need. The world certainly needs to put heads together to sort this out.