NY gets wired for high-speed Internet access.

High-speed Internet access has become THE essential technology in residential buildings today, be it new or renovated properties. New York residents, accustomed to T-1 connections at their workplaces, find it increasingly difficult to tolerate the inconvenience of dial-up Internet access at home. They demand faster surfing speeds and constant connectivity.

While building owners clamor to outfit their buildings with the necessary architecture to support this technology, tenants are becoming increasingly frustrated at having to wait for service to be delivered. When it finally arrives, they find it is sometimes as slow as their old 56k modem.

The market has become crowded with companies offering to "wire" buildings at no charge to owners, with the hope of making up the investment with revenues from subscribers in the building. The result is that building owners are being bombarded with sales calls from companies which at first glance all seem to offer the same services. In fact, all is not as it appears.

In an effort to straighten out some of the confusion associated with the diverse technologies being offered, the following is an explanation of differences among the current service offerings:

Dial-up

Dial-up is the technology everybody wants to move away from. New compression schemes and modem technology cannot keep pace with content-obsessed Web developers. The best you can hope for is about 45kbps throughput on a dial-up modem to an ISP. Downsides in the MDU market include the fact that each connection occupies a dial-tone in the apartment, which is becoming a scarce resource. General downsides include the slow speed, busy signals...and getting knocked off-line for no apparent reason.

DSL 

Digital Subscriber Line service (up to 64Okkps) is being provisioned by the telephone companies or their business partners. DSL uses existing telephone cable and is an always on high-speed service. You are free to use the same line for voice conversations. This type os service is typically provided as "ADSL." The "A" is for Asymmetric, meaning your upload times are significantly slower than your download times. This has a negative impact on video-conferencing and large file uploads. There is one significant technological limitation in the MDU marketplace: cross-talk. If more than seven subscribers have DSL service within the same riser cable bundle, interference from cross-talk will degrade or stop the service. DSL is essentially a tactical technological band-aid, using expensive electronics to save the cost of establishing a proper network foundation (i.e. installing a data grade network infrastructure).

Cable/Modem

Cable/Modem service is a high-speed shared medium using the cable TV infrastructure, typically coaxial cable. The speed is dramatic for the initial subscribers to this service. Because it is a shared medium, service degrades as additional subscribers use it. The service history of the provider for television service has to be considered when weighing how effective they will be in implementing and supporting a PC network. This is not a long-term solution by any means. Cable/Modem service degrades with subscriber usage: the more popular the Internet becomes, the slower the speed for each customer will be.

LAN/WAN 

Local Area Network/Wide Area Network is the standard commercial grade data network architecture that has been deployed in the commercial sector for over a decade. Wireless or Ethernet networks are deployed in the buildings and connected to the Internet via digital communications circuits. T - 1 (1.5 mbs) or faster connections are typically deployed. Standard network protocols allow the service provider to "shape" the band-width of each customer, allowing high- speed options from 64kbps to 11mbps. LAN in the building establishes an infrastructure that can be the foundation for many other applications. The LAN is usually a wired Ethernet (data grade cables installed in the tenant's apartment) or Wire less (no horizontal cables required).

Wireless

This is an established standards-based architecture for unique network applications. The current version runs at 11 megabits per second (mbps). Typically, a new data grade cable infrastructure is deployed in the building riser system to connect wire-less transmitters in the stairwells or hall-ways. Subscribers are then connected via network Interface card installed in the PC. The biggest advantage to this format is that there are no wires to contend with in hall-ways or apartments. You can surf the Web on your laptop un-tethered by a cable. NYC-based Advanced Digital Internet is an ISP specializing in the delivery of Ethernet and wireless networks in the MDU market-place.

Competition Breeds Better Service

Many providers are pursuing a bundled services strategy, combining voice, cable TV and data network access into a single offering. The reality is that they still need to deploy three separate technology solutions to each customer. The long-term effectiveness of trying to be someone's butcher, baker and candlestick-maker remains to be seen. Service bundles have a history of being broken easily: witness the long distance telephone wars. While attractive during the sign-up period, it is inevitable that people want a choice of service providers.

Over-Subscription Rate the True Determining Factor in Internet Response Times

Would it be economical for highway engineers to build roads that could support every registered car and truck traveling at the same time? Of course not. The same is true for Internet providers. The final funnel your Internet packets need to squeeze through is the ISP's connection to the Internet backbone. The ratio of subscribers' bandwidth to the ISP's connection to the Internet is known as the "over-subscription rate." There are no rules here, just the policies established by each vendor, and they differ widely. A brief review of a few bandwidth-oriented newsgroups should reveal how satisfied the provider's customers are with the actual speed and customer service being delivered.

Some architectures being deployed in the MDU marketplace, most notably Cable/Modem and DSL, risk failure by virtue of their inability to handle the bandwidth demand being generated within the building. Building owners should keep in mind that DSL and cable modem technologies are adapting aging infrastructures to support a data network. Competition is a good thing, and smart building owners will promote competition for electronic tenant services within their buildings. Wireless solutions have already been proven in commercial environments such as hospitals, academic institutions and Fortune 500 corporations. Wireless technology is the future of Internet access, and it's here already.