Time to Hook Up to the Internet

Legend has it that the Greek athlete Phidippides unknowingly laid down the first rail of communications in 490BC[bc] when he ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the Persians.

Only a couple of decades ago, in the days when telegrams were rare, cost and the only way of despatching urgent news, everyone in the street knew that the intelligence they contained were of some exclusivity.

During World War II, when telegram spelt the fatality on the field, it gave those little dun envelopes and the lone postman who delivered them a distinctly sinister aura.

Today, communications are faster, cheaper and more commonplace than ever before. The telephone, a domestic luxury until recently, is almost everywhere. Fax machines clutter in the corners of businesses, and in many homes, too. And the biggest revolution of all, e-mail — electronic mail — is starting to gain ground at an astonishing pace, with implications, for both businesses and consumers. With e-mail, the art of written communication, seemed to be gone forever in the TV generation, has made a comeback.

E-mail. What is it by any means? This is quite like everyday mailing system; it sends and receives messages across computers electronically. But for that, there should be electronic communications — networks, to put it technically — across the computers intended for the purpose.

Six people working with six different computers may have to leave their places to exchange documents, messages or information. This is the point where a network comes to fish them out of such situations. The basic reason for having a computer network — local or wide area networks, LAN or WAN as referred to in compspeak — is to be able to share resources.

On a network, each and every computer does not require to have separate printers for each of them; rather a printer attached to one would do and people working with other computers can easily get their documents in print through the one with the printer connected. On a global network, if there is any, the documents could be sent to anywhere in the world.

Furthermore, electronic mail is by no means confined to mere definition of transferring documents or information. It, in fact, does not provide for any resource sharing facilities, though one could do that too if one really wanted to.

Electronic mail works across the computers placed at geographically distant locations, meant for sharing information. Nowadays, a huge worldwide network is in use by millions of e-mail subscribers to share information sources on almost everything. An access to this network means an access to a virtually unlimited collection of information. People have come up with a name for it — the Internet or the Net.

All the story started with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) along with its Department of Defence with a plan and later implementation of a countrywide network of computers basically for research purposes. Over the last two decades or so, the previously independent computer networks of different organisations, universities, government agencies gradually became interconnected through this experimental skeleton of computer communications. It happened quite dispersedly, depending on the need and involving technology whatever was appropriate at the time of implementation.

The collection of these various interconnections can be figured as a single chain which formed he Internet. The framework has no virtual ground because it has no singular authority with singular framework. Any organisation that owns a network is responsible for its own share of its connection to the network.

The Internet these days has become a global network of networks, linking large communications services like CompuSere, America Online, World Wide Web, Genie and others together. The Internet, states the US-based Internet Society, has reached about 25 million computer users. The original network owned by NSF, which is still used for the Internet, has grown up a lot.

Electronic main connectivity requires some basic equipment — a telephone line, a personal computer and a modem, a device that takes the digital information from one computer and translates it into audio signals that can be sent over common telephone lines — in brief, it modulates and demodulates computer signals into audio pulses. Moreover, the Internet connectivity aspirant should have to be a subscriber to an Internet service provider. The[y] should have the capacity to send and receive 2400 bits per second, often used the acronym bps, which roughly translates into 240 words a minute, or 2,400 characters a minute.

The usual subscription requires opening an account on any Internet service provider at a dollar 100 sign-up fee and, say another dollar 30 a month. Telephone calls, allowing access to the Internet are charged at local rates across the world. The Internet service by itself is free of cost.

E-mail is not only cheaper than most other means, it is also faster. Less cost and much speed make e-mail one of the most efficient means of communications of the day. Mailing set aside, something called on-line, on the connection, chat is also possible on a proper Internet connection, enabling exchange of typed messages at the same time between two people. And in most cases, it can take the place of a facsimile.

But the other benefits of e-mail come to a person when he has got an access to the Internet. These are some useful mailing features. The same mail can be broadcast to a number of people or a group on the Net or it can simply be meant for a single individual.

There are FTPs, acronym for File Transfer Protocol, actually programs for transferring files from certain sites or locations on the Internet. These FTP-sites are equipped with computer programs to send documents at the user’s request. When an user logs in to some FTP-location, he or she can get an access to myriad information files. Nowadays, there are many useful documents and public-domain compute programs or sharewares on these protocol locations.

A compound service is a BBS or Bulletin Board Service where, beside sending or receiving mail, some[ ]one can log in to use it as a repository of information. For example, there is a web site, http://www.dinktoy.com/review/main.htm, where all the computer magazines published in English in the world are up for grabs.

There are many electronic journals, on the Internet, only who do not print the materials on papers rather send it to a specific site for public use. On the New Year’s day this year, The Times got on the Internet on http://www.the-times.co.uk; followed by its sister paper The Sunday Times a week. The whole paper can be read on computer at about 2:30am at the same time as the printed version is being produced. A report last week on The times says that the Internet Times readership has passed 40,000 and it is increasing at an average rate of almost 3,000 a day.

Even the genealogists are making historical connections through the Internet. The Society of Genealogoist are to publish a guide to genealogy on the Internet in March this year. David Hawgood, the author of this guide, last year discovered a relative, Stephen Hawgood, working as a security company manager in Hong Kong. Mutual interest sing friends, contacts and browsing through country records revealed that they were related by an 18th-century marriage licence.

A survey conducted by Lawrence Landweber of the Computer Science Department at the University of Wisconsin last year showed that there are now 173 entities, geographic areas that have an ISO (International Standard Organisation) two-letter code, worldwide that have Internet access or e-mail. His data shows that 96 entities have Internet connectivity, 77 have only e-mail and 65 entities have no international network connectivity. Bangladesh only e-mail connectivity with BD code. It’s full off-line.

In order to get an access to the global electronic mailing system, some one has to provide an access service on a commercial basis. Standard telephone lines are used to call on the provider while high-speed data-grade lines are required to let the provider connect to some foreign provider.

An Internet connectivity calls for a standard T-1 line to handle a speed of 1.5 mega-bps, but the Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph Board has logistic support manipulate only 9.6 kilo-bps data transmission. This is what remains the hurdle for any organisation, government or non-government, to launch an on-line Internet connectivity.

There are currently not more than half a dozen e-mail service providers, running off-line connectivity, who upload or download all the subscribers’ files from and to Bangladesh at certain intervals among its clients. it sends all international messages to a Singapore-based Internet host machine. From there the messages get on the Internet chain proper and ultimately reach the destination.

Drik Alokchitra Granthagar Ltd started its service in 1994 with an access to a Dutch NGO-like network, TOOLNet. It exchanges its mails en route either Singapore or the Netherlands. BDNet is another e-mail service provider now working the city.

The sign-up fee apart, they all charge a monthly subscription of taka around on thousand and another taka 20 per kilo-byte, roughly 1,000 characters, mailing. Some of them charge for both sending and receiving mails and some of them only charge on the sending.

There is only one small-scale private BBS now operating in Bangladesh and that too is a non-profitable venture. The Concept Computer Network probably started the first BBS in 1993 in the country and was closed with no one interested in it around. Another one, AGNI BBS, was started later in 1994, now in better position than the time its provider blazed the trail.

Akkas, Abu Jar M (1996 Jan. 26). Time to Hook Up to the Internet. The Financial Express. S 12∗

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