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Cottage Magazine arrow Cottage Magazine arrow Past Issues arrow 2008 Issues arrow March - April 2008 arrow Searching for a Signal - Internet options in remote areas
Searching for a Signal - Internet options in remote areas E-mail
Searching for a SignalThe sun’s rays are starting to fade. With my laptop open in front of me, I glance up in time to see a wakeboarder land a barrel roll in front of our dock. The view from my deck (and makeshift summer office) is infinitely more interesting than the one back home in Vancouver. It seems I’m not alone. Many of my neighbours are opting to spend their summers, or at least extend their visits, by working remotely from the cabin. While the setting is more serene and relaxing, getting Internet access on Horne Lake — a small interior lake 70 kilometres north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, British Columbia — is proving to be a frustrating and expensive experience. There are many ways to access today’s Internet, from a dial-up modem on a telephone line to a wireless hotspot café, but not all connections are created equal.

Dial-Up
The speed at which people connect to the Web is largely determined by where they live and how much they’re willing to pay. In rural areas, for example, little investment has been made by the telephone companies to upgrade the public network infrastructure. Most people still rely on a 56 K modem plugged into their telephone jack to access email and surf the ‘Net. The challenge these people are encountering is with the Internet itself. Websites like the CBC’s (www.cbc.ca) and Yahoo.com, are becoming more graphically rich with videos, photos and online search engines. Users have to wait a long time just for text and pictures to download.

People living in larger urban areas are able to access the Internet at much faster speeds. At home in Vancouver, I use Shaw’s high-speed cable service, or what is commonly referred to as broadband. Instead of surfing the ‘Net at 56 kbps, whereby 56,000 bits of data are transmitted per second, utilizing the cable television’s infrastructure, I can send five million bits of data (5 MB) in a single second. It’s almost 1,000 times faster on a broadband network. Downloading a photo, for example, only takes about three seconds; that same photo can take up to an hour on a dial-up connection.


To read the full story, pick up the Cottage magazine 2008 Planning Guide at your local newsstand. To get more great articles like this one delivered conveniently to your doorstep, subscribe now.
 
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