Networking is so difficult.....

World is filling with Internet. Everyone is simply hooked by it. Just about everyone needs it. And they need it in their office. Of course the office will pay for the internet, and for their time that was spent on the Internet. And yes, they need it at their desktop.

It is not of concern for the techincal feasibility whether single point on the desk is possible or not. They need it and they need it yesterday. It doesn't matter whether one more point in network makes life of others very difficult. Thats the way consumers are. All they are concerned about is service. But these consumer only want service, not the quality of service. It does not matter if a 1 kb document takes more than one hour to down as long as they can download it on their desktop.

It is extremely sad facet of all this is that overall quality of service does a steep nose dive. And the technical personnels responsible for making sure that does not happen falls victim to beaurocracy. People will do anything in their powers -- request, befriend, try and talk through, impose superior order, humiliate -- to get that done. The working task force is reluctant, never willing to give in to those forces. Ultimately, though, the working force is made to do it, whether they like it or not. And why should they like it? They will like it better if they didn't have to work at all. They will like it much better if they were also able to just enjoy the Internet!! Afterall thats what everyone else is doing!!!

Readers must perceive that with all thats going on for Internet On Desk, some real work must also be happening. Let me put it this way. Part of the traffic that goes through my test proxy server is mostly directed to messenger clients -- yahoo, msn and aol, top of the list being yahoo. Second most popular site is cricket statistics and live scores, third is windows update, fourth is MSN Messenger. In July, MSN Messenger was downloaded 2935 times. With a network of about 200 computers, that results to almost 15 downloads per computer. Online Cricket score was updated 20000 times. And thats just straight sites. about 25% of bandwidth goes into pornography of one kind or another. Around 30% goes to pictures of pretty girls around the net. About 10% goes to emails. There are lot more than those activities in Internet. So how much of the bandwidth is actually used for the office? How much of this bandwidth is actually productive?

With these questions in mind, I have yet to decide how to manage networking in another 700 or so computers that will arrive in this office within few years. I am going crazy thinking about what to do when so many computers arrive. How do I create more access points? How do I accomodate more computers in already cramped network? I am going crazy. may be in a few days, you will find me in a certain hospital, my hairs all straight, unshaven for weeks, cloth looking more like rags, etcetra, etcetra. But until then, please let me sign off and enjoy my sanity -- or whatever is left of it. Ciao.