Ask Steve

I was just thinking that all too often we take some of the things we use the most for granted. This made me think about search engines. I have been asked many times which search engine in best and though it has changed over the years at this point I would resoundingly say - GOOGLEGoogle does a really good job of trying to present with web sites that are truly about what you are looking for. Several years ago it wasn’t uncommon to ask for one thing and from a search engine and get something entirely different. Google came along and changed the search engine by focusing on content rather then listing anything that said it was about something. Google looks at both the intended content as well as the actual content of the web site and does a really good job of giving you back what you asked for.

Oh sure, the longer you have used the internet probably the longer the list is of the things you could say about Google both good and bad, but in respect to how it used to be and how much better Google has forced the search engines that are still around to give us what we are searching for, I say good job Google.

If you havent tried it give www.google.com a chance - I think you will be glad you did

I am asked this question all the time. It is true these days that the internet spans most of the world. With satellite and other such connections, there are very few places in the world with no access it at all theses days. This can be an extremely overwhelming thought. You may have felt like How will I EVER find any information, let alone one specific piece of information, among all the other things that are out there. For that matter how does my computer even know even know who I am and how to return my information back to me. That is a VERY legitimate question and the amazingly with the billions upon billions of pieces of information out there, and the hundreds of millions of people looking for information the internet know exactly what page you are looking for and how to deliver it to you. With the addition of search engines like Google that pride themselves on helping you find what you are looking finding information has never been easier

Want to know about how the internet know and get you your web site. See my post on Domains, IP addreses servers, DNS oh my!

1. Here is a brief overview of the orginal structure of the internet
1. The main connection - NAP

i. All Internet networks have to meet somewhere in order to be able to exchange data. The place where that occurs is at something called a Network Access Point or NAP.
1. There were four original network access points in the United States these were located in:
a. San Francisco
b. Chicago
c. Atlanta
d. Pennsauken, New Jersey

2. Since 1994 many other have been added including:
a. Baltimore
b. Washington, DC
c. Tucson
d. New Mexico
e. Nashville
f. Seattle
g. AND MANY MORE
b. MAE
i. As answer to the mostly former “Bell Telecom” based NAP’s, the MAE connection points were set up by MCI Worldcom to compete with the NAP’s. The original ones were based in:
1. Mae-East –Washington, DC
2. Mae-West –San Jose, CA
3. Mae Huston
4. Mae Dallas
5. Mae LA
ii. Most of these points would now also be typically considered NAP’s
c. Beyond that there are a multitude of both private and public exchanges for local traffic. These local exchanges are called “piers”
d. Each pier hooks into another. These are called HOPS
i. Piers hooked into a NAP are known as HOP0 meaning there are no more hops than them to the NAP.
ii. Each of these providers then resell to provider below them and make more HOPS
iii. Each time you add a HOP, you introduce two elements that slow the speed down.
1. Each HOP creates a slow down
2. Every HOP you go through gives potential for errors and/or failure

So I type in www.alveus.com how is it that my computer knows how to find it?

Domain names are purchased from a company like www.dotmaniac.com or www.godaddy.com. These names are then registered with an international organization called Internic. Internic oversees a world full of computers that all talk to each other and knows who owns the domain name and where to go to find it. Every domain name corresponds in to a number called an IP address. These IP addresses are the actual location of the server where the web site is stored. Think of it as a house address. You have a name and you live somewhere in order to find the person with your name we must go to your address and then ask for you.
Every web site is “hosted” on a server. The term hosted refers to the physical location of where the actual information that makes up the web site is on a computers hard drive. As we stated before this kind of computer is called a ‘server’. Internet Service Providers, usually referred to as an ISP, of all sizes offer “hosting” of web sites. This allows their customers to save the HTML code on the ISP’s server hard drive. Servers are online 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. So if you host a web site with a company like this your web site can be seen by anyone anywhere in the world anytime.
Whether by domain name or IP address the complete address is called a URL.URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. In other words the URL, in always the same way, sends a request out to the whole world of the internet and because all URL’s follow the same set of rule they will always brings back whatever you told them to go get. This URL has information in it works much like your mailing address. Just as your mail goes to a specific state, then city, then zip code and finally to your street and your house the IP address that supports the domain name has this same information on it and is shared with servers know as Domain Name Servers (DNS). These DNS servers tell the world all the URLs that should come to it then when any request for any of those goes to any other DNS server it knows to send to that specific one. Just like the mail man knows to send it to your city or state. From there the DNS server and send it to the server the web site is on and finally that server can send back the specific information you requested (the web page)

That is an amazing amount of work in just a few seconds huh!

Though it is true your computer can become infected with a virus (which with most cases is VERY preventable), this virus is not contagious to you or any other appliance in the house. If you have multiple computers it is possible for them to pass a virus to one another but even the wiring that connects them is not infected. Relax though, this is not as big of a deal as it may seem.

Whether you choose a paid program like Microsoft’s new Live OneCare or a free program like Avast it is a quick simple and painless process to keep all of your computers virus free.

 If you have a web browser you are ready to search and find information.  You can look at news both written and video feeds.  You can check the weather, the almanac, driving conditions, find out who plays Mr. so and so in the movie you just watched and the list goes on.  University of Phoenix has an online library that is 2^nd only to the US Library of Congress and that is just one web site out of billions.  Bloggers write about things that are meaningless and things that are important that no one else will report.  If you have a love for information then you will soon know why the internet is called the information superhighway.  Most of the time just like on a regular highway any vehicle will do.  In truth, the speed at which you can type in information, read what is on a site to see if it is what you are looking for, process it and then move on will in most cases be the thing that slows you down.  Also like a car you can spend a lot and have the capability to go faster then anyone else on the road even if you never use it.  The thing you will find when you are gathering information is that with so much out there you will quickly need to manage what things you keep and what things you learn to reference when you need it.  Only one word of caution - Almost always the first need of all information seekers is more hard drive space to put everything.

There are two major causes for a specific web page coming up slower. If you are meaning why are ALL web sites coming up slow or why is my computer slow go here

1. Dilution - One thing that slows things down is something called bandwidth dilution.
a. As an example let’s say an internet service provider purchases a T1 from the HOP above them.
i. A T1 has the ability to transfer 1.45 Megs of data per second, every second of the day.
ii. This would be HOP1
b. For our example let assume that provider then sells a T1 to another one of their customers
i. They do this because it is typically safe to assume that in most cases no one customer will use a full T1 24 hours a day,7 days a week.
ii. Typically this same service provider will then sell another T1 to another customer. Keep in mind this is the same T1 they have access to.
iii. The HOP1 provider will do this anywhere from 10 to 20 times before going back and getting another T1 for their own access
iv. Each of the customers sold this same T1 are HOP2 providers
1. The next hop down the line does the exact same thing and sells T1s to 10 to 20 of their customers.
2. These are HOP3
3. HOP4 does the same thing,
4. HOP5 does the same thing and so on.
5. When the customer connects with a 56k modem what is left?
v. Assume that your modem is connected to a HOP5 provider
vi. If each of them is reselling only at 10 to 1 that allows 135 bytes (there are 1000 bytes in one K) per person if everyone was accessing it simultaneously. BUT KEEP IN MIND THIS IS EVERY SINGLE SECOND 24/7

2. Traffic – how many people are looking for the same thing you are?
a. Just as a computer has only so many things it can do at once the same thing is true with the computer the information you are asking for is coming from. This can be caused by:
i. A lot of people asking for the same thing at once. Like say information on who just won Survivor the day it is announced
ii. The computer being asked is old or not maintained well.
Though there isn’t much you can do about traffic in general it is always a good idea to check and be sure that your internet company has good up to date equipment so that they are not the reason for things going slow. Even more importantly, as you can see, it is extremely important to be sure that what the provider you are using has as a policy on dilution.

When you perform a search the more specific you can be the better. If you were to look up the word “computer” you would get 10′a of millions of results and who knows whether any of them would be what you are looking for. If you narrowed the search even a little say to the phrase “laptop computer” you will likely reduce the total results down to about 10% of the word computer alone. Still this is millions of results and again may not have any thing you are looking for. Are you looking for “laptop computer repair” or “laptop computer parts” or “laptop computer sales” or something else entirely? Let’s say you want to buy a new laptop. Which would you prefer, the best price or a local company you can go to for questions service and upgrades? Each of those have appeal to different people but each is a different search. The more specific search phrase “lowest price laptop computer” or “cheap laptop computer” will not only yield a much more specific set of results and probably less then 1% of million we were looking at before. However this would be a much different result from a search for “laptop computer sales portland oregon”. This search will probably be the least number of results because of it’s very specific nature and if local is what you are looking for you will be set. On the other hand if you want to lowest price anywhere it may not be locally. Either way as you can see the more specific you can be the less results you will have and the more to what you are looking for they will be. I would suggest starting with as many search crteria as you can and eliminate words till you get the result you are looking for.

By the way webmasters the works in reverse too. The more you know your audience the better the result. See webmasters know your audience for more detail.

While Google sents out programs called bots to search the web and save information about the sites it finds. Whereas Yahoo does things a little differently. Yahoo is technically a human interaction index rather then a search engine. If you want your web site on Yahoo you must submit your site for review. Then a person at Yahoo actually takes a look at the content and the web site to insure that what you say the site contains it indeed does. They also want to determine whether or not the information contained on the site adds “value” to the web. Yahoo actually deserves credit for wanting to have valuable, reliable content years before Google even existed. As you can guess the downside to this is the vast number of web site that need to be reviewed and catalogued. Though this is a daunting task Yahoo continues to provide quality content results to your search.

As time goes by you will probably feel like your computer is getting slower and slower. The truth is that it probably is! one of the best things you can to do speed up your computer performance is to go to the of the browser and under TOOLS click on OPTIONS and in the general tab click the button that says delete history. Depending on how long ago (or if ) you have done this it may take a few seconds. While you are there you may also want to change the setting for saving the history to something like 10 days. This will delete you history, cookies and temporary files which in many cases will speed things up for you greatly.

The second simpe solution is undered your Programs in a directory called System tools you can click on a program called “disck clean-up” this will scan your computer (it WILL take a while) and then show you a bunch of programs you can delete, by default there will be nothing reccommended that will cause you any trouble and you can easily delete these items.

Many times just those 2 simple things can create a computer speed that is noticebaly different. You can always run a virus scan program, pop-up and/or adware program or even if you know how run a disk defragment to even further fix your performance.