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Bandwidth Hell
By Richard Nantel | July 25, 2007
I just spent two weeks using a dial-up connection to access the Internet. Being on vacation in
New Brunswick, I had limited need to get online. Still, when I did log on, the experience was similar to — and about as much fun as — watching grass grow.
Sites I normally visit and enjoy were soon avoided because their images took forever to load. I’ve gained a new appreciation for lean Web sites.Surfing the Web was a pain. But, the worst of all was getting my e-mail. Every morning, I’d watch as 75-100 e-mails, 80 percent of them spam, would trickle in. Spammers continue to find ways to circumvent spam filters. Their latest tricks (which you surely know) are to send their messages as embedded graphics or as PDF attachments. Both of these strategies put an even greater strain on bandwidth.
Whereas e-mail spam is an inconvenience using a broadband connection, with dial-up, you develop an intense hatred for spammers as each ad for Viagra, pirated software, or lonely girls comes in. If we were all still using dial-up Internet connections, we would have abandoned e-mail as a bad idea years ago and would be using instant messaging for most of our communications today.
It’s hard to believe, but true, that many Internet users, and online learners, are still limited to surfing at 56 kbs or lower. If you’re a content developer and have even a few learners accessing content this way, do them a favor. Test the content you’re giving them using a dial-up connection to experience the content as they’ll see it. This will likely convince you to optimize the content or provide them with a text only version.
