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My Mac refused to acknowledge it even had an internal modem, despite the fact I had been happily surfing earlier that morning. I was not around in 1965 when 8 northeastern states went dark, but I remember a particular evening in July '77 like it was yesterday, when the second New York blackout silenced our only three TV stations. The same feeling descended upon me when I realized my near endless stream of email messages had disappeared.
I spent the remainder of the morning and the entire afternoon amid a nest of cables, circuit boards, empty Pepsi cans, and obstinate hardware, without success. Finally, I was able to diagnose the problem, although nothing less than a costly new motherboard would reconnect my 56Kbps modem and restore my Internet connection.
I had no intention of scrapping an otherwise perfectly good computer because a half-cent component failed to close a circuit. I elected instead to reconnect to the Internet via the
Mac's Ethernet port. Most dial-up modems do not have an Ethernet port, but cable modems and DSL (digital subscriber lines) have them as standard equipment. Even better, in my neighborhood, the cost of installing DSL would be about the same as what the ISP and the second phone line already cost.
There are two suppliers for a DSL connection: the phone company, which provides the service over existing telephone lines, and an ISP. The choice of ISP is limited to those which work with specific phone companies. Issues such as email boxes, web space, price, and support are the same as selecting a dial-up provider, with one exception. Most DSL accounts do not include a dial-up provision, and if you travel with a laptop, you may need a second account just for road trips.
The phone company did not have to visit my house to hook up the service. They mailed me a box with a DSL 'modem' (which is
actually a router), some cables, and a set of filters. All I had to do was attach the in-line filters to each phone outlet, hook up the router, and plug a cable into the Ethernet port on my Mac. Setting up the Mac itself was as easy as selecting a few preferences in the TCP/IP Control Panel. Later that day GTE flipped a switch at the central office and I connected to the net at 768Kbps.
The feeling was like when the power comes back on after a storm knocks it out, only better. About a dozen times better. The first web page loaded in about three seconds. The QuickTime 4.1 update downloaded in three minutes. I was in Bandwidth-heaven. Not having to log on and off gave the connection an even more immediate feel. Now the time I had spent watching the browser window load could be spent reading.
And the next time the cable goes out, I can watch streaming video, albeit with a tiny, snow-filled picture that evokes the bygone era of rabbit ears and three TV
stations.
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"One
Step Back, One Dozen Forward"
