Internet commentary
Whose speed was far faster than light*
Keywords: Internet, plating printed circuit boards
I was quite surprised recently, when I read that 85.6 per cent of several thousand respondents in a survey in the UK were using dial-up modems. The same survey showed that ISDN had dropped by over one-half between 2000 and 2001. This may be because many of the previous users had moved to ADSL. This latter form of broadband connection has not met, though, with the popularity that had been hoped for, possibly because of the cost but also because it is not available in many places.
In the USA, broadband connections are much more commonplace. On the other hand, the percentage of surfers using broadband connections in many other countries must be even lower than in Great Britain.
Although large companies are often linked into the Internet by a dedicated optic fibre connection, small and medium ones are still using copper and even,in some cases, a multiplicity of dial-up networking. The theoretical maximum speed of this is 56.6 kilobits per second. In practice, most connections to the local Internet service provider are made between 45 and 50 kilobits per second. Very frequently, the speed between this ISP and the remote server is very much slower. This may be because of congestion on the network or, quite often, the server itself is either slow, overloaded or badly connected.
I have often mentioned this before and used it as an argument to make sure that your corporate pages download as rapidly as possible. I must admit, I had never realised that the percentage of dial-up network users was so high in a developed country. I've been having a look at prices for ADSL connections in a few countries. In some cases, these can only be described as exorbitant, with many extras, whereas in others, they may be one-third overall that of the others. Why should this be? It is certainly not a question of the quality of service, because I have heard that some of the cheapest ones are every bit as good as the more expensive ones, if not better. I would suggest that the real answer is in the cost of mobile telephony. Some of the telecommunications companies have become so heavily financially engaged in providing third generation services that they are being forced to increase the prices of their other services in order to spread the load. This can also be seen in the cost of dial-up networking. A couple of years ago, totally free dial-up networking was quite common. Less so today. Either you pay a subscription or you pay for your calls or both.
The subscription that I pay is relatively modest, about £7 per month and, on top of that, I pay 20 cents an hour for connection time (the Cyprus pound is worth about eight per cent more than the sterling pound). My daughter,living in Switzerland, pays four Swiss francs per hour during normal working hours. This is eight times higher than I pay! Yet the service is quasi-identical.
Like many other countries, Cyprus offers an ADSL service for about £30 per month and no connection charge. I applied to be connected about one year ago and I'm still waiting. The reason is that the State telecommunications service has been overwhelmed by the demand and is only offering the service within the larger towns and not to the small villages, such as where I live. I feel quite disgruntled about this because I pay about the same amount of money for the much inferior dial- up networking and yet they advertise widely this ADSL service. However, I understand that this situation is not unique to Cyprus but is common in many countries. I think it would be a good idea if the various telecommunications authorities and companies realised that their future depends on the quality of their Internet services.
I have noticed that a number of commentators are beginning to doubt the viability of third- generation mobile networking, as I have done for two years. I predicted that WAP would not take off, and it didn't: I have also predicted in these columns the same for 3G. The telecommunications providers are also beginning to realise that life will not be a bed of roses for them. With today's competition, their future must lie in providing excellent Internet services at a reasonable cost. We can perhaps catch a glimpse of the future with NetMeeting. Although very crude, this software can provide video telephony across continents for next to nothing. With broadband communications, more powerful computers and better web cams, I am convinced that this will be the way of the future. In less than a decade, our video telephony will have a resolution which will approach that of a VHS tape, perhaps half that of current broadcast quality.
I have been asked on a couple of occasions whether ADSL is worth what is perceived to be an extra cost. There can never be a rigid answer to this question that would cover all cases. The two obvious advantages are permanent connection and higher downloading speeds (the uploading speeds are no higher, as a general rule, than with an ordinary modem). However even these advantages need to be qualified. Some service providers will cut the permanent connection automatically if there has been no traffic for, say, 30 minutes. This problem may be overcome, very simply, by setting your e-mail client to check for new messages every 25 minutes. Even worse, some providers will cut the connection after 12 or 24 hours on a timed basis, though there may be uploading or downloading taking place – I personally think that this is scandalous! On the question of higher downloading speeds, this can vary greatly from one provider to another, but also from the distance between your connection and the nearest telephony node. As with many other things, read the fine print before committing yourself! Otherwise, if your Internet connection charges plus subscription exceed about 75 per cent of what the ADSL will cost you, then I would think that it would be worthwhile. This is because the higher connection speed will allow you to tolerate looking at websites that are currently too slow to download and thus try your patience.
For this issue, I am putting myself into the boots of somebody wishing to buy a new plating line. In order to do this, I have put into Google the keywords, "printed circuit plating equipment''.
The first URL to come up is that of Eidschun Engineering in Florida. Except for the fact that it uses frames, the Home Page is lean and mean and contains everything that one could expect. In line with my prologue, the download time is fast. What I should like to point out is that there is a very good reason why this site comes up first in Google. The creators know how to put in meta keywords and descriptions. It is easy to navigate down to the pages containing information relevant to our industry. On the screen, there is nothing to criticise about the equipment on offer, although there is not a great deal of technical information. In addition to the plating line, pure and simple, this company offers some sophisticated control equipment and, above all, the means to ensure minimal effluent problems.
Kepro is a company which is well-known for supplying equipment essentially for making prototype circuitry. This page is no exception and it offers two small pieces of plating equipment consisting of the plater itself and the power supply. It is relatively unsophisticated material but probably adequate for the purpose for which it was designed. Again, the company's Home Page has a very good list of keywords in the header. This makes for good identification by search engines. In addition, the page on plating equipment is fast to download. Technically, the information could be better. For example, I could imagine that somebody wishing to buy prototype equipment would probably not know sufficient about the technical aspects of gold plating finger contacts or tin/lead pattern plating, and he would wish to know more before laying down a few thousand dollars. In particular, there is no mention of the solutions.
This is an example of a poor site. I won't comment on the aesthetics other than to say that they are not to my taste. In the first place, the Home Page gives no details about where the company is or how to contact the powers-that-be within it, except that it does mention that they are in the UK. One could guess this anyway from the country domain in the URL. Navigation is extremely simple,mainly because there is no great depth of information available. By clicking into the "Projects'' page, one can find half-a-dozen examples, with photographs and a couple of lines of description, of equipment which has been supplied. A couple of pages are devoted to representations of pumps and barrels. Finally, it is only by clicking on "Contacts'' that one can find that the company is situated in Aylesbury. One good point on this page is that the key personnel of the company are named with their individual e-mail addresses. This page also shares with the Home Page a photograph of the company location,looking as if it were taken at night with the illumination from the street lights – not exactly the acme of artistic prowess!
Although the aesthetic quality of MacDermid's site is more pleasing to my eyes, it shares a lot in common with the previous one: it is rather a hotchpotch of pages than a rational site giving the technical information that prospective customers would be seeking. In the page marked "Metallisation'', there is a short paragraph and a photograph about the equipment that is on offer. Other than that, nothing! Unlike the previous one, there are several different ways of access to finding places to contact them. Perhaps one of the most negative points is that the page "Service and Support'' is pure commercial description without any means of obtaining what it purports to give. I'm sure that a company with MacDermid's world-wide reputation could have done a better job than this to provide a good technical service over the Internet.
The Home Page of Technic Inc is a little cluttered with a purely graphics menu system which would not work if the browser did not have script plug-in capabilities. This would rather put the website on the end of a limb. Again,there is little information about where the company is situated or even what it does, other than a couple of short phrases. Clicking on the "Plating Equipment'' item, takes you to a very simple page with a number of useful links to more detailed pages. An assiduous search takes you to a number of pages that could be useful to the prospective client. To some extent, the plating equipment does mention the chemical process, unlike other sites. The company also offers automatic analysing systems to keep the process within the rails. The "Contact'' page gives the bare necessities for North America, Europe and Asia.
I must admit that I was quite surprised when I viewed this site. It concerns the US subsidiary of the French conglomerate, Atofina, more noted for its petroleum products than for printed circuit technology. However, I was more relieved when I saw that it was an offshoot of Schering – at least, here was a name I knew! Scrolling down the very long page, one comes to a section devoted to our subject. However, the unfortunate part is that this consists of two photographs and a map of the USA showing where the electronics equipment group is located. The catastrophe is that there is no link from this section. Feeling certain that this oversight must be an accident, I headed back to the Home Page and found the menu item entitled "PCB Equipment''. Clicking on this produced ... nothing – only a "page not available'' error! Oh, how sad!
ASET Inc., or Accelerated Surface Engineering Technologies Inc., is a company specialising in supplying pulse generators for electroplating. The Home Page appears very crude by modern standards, although it does use JavaScript, but why remains a mystery! This site does stand out from all the previous ones in that it provides a number of pages with a considerable amount of technical detail,somewhat refreshing. There is actually very little on the site specific to printed circuits. However, the company does claim to be able to offer an unusual degree of throwing power with a microsection of a 0.45 mm diameter hole in a thick substrate with an aspect ratio of 20:1. This photograph actually looks quite extraordinary.
I have searched through some 120 entries in Google to weed out the above sites. This is actually really very bad. Quite a number of the major manufacturers of plating lines have not appeared. Most of the sites in this sector leave a lot to be desired. I would suggest that, if your site is reviewed above, you may care to take an impartial look at it to see how it can be improved, with more technical detail. If your site is not reviewed, then this is either because Google, the number one search engine, has simply not recognised your manufacturing sector or, if it has, then the text that it throws up is not sufficiently explicit to show what you're doing.
It is simply not sufficient to convince a potential buyer with a photograph of a plating line that may have been taken 10 or more years ago. Your purchaser is no fool, so don't treat him as one. Provide him with the information that he needs in order to select you on the shortlist for negotiations. I am sure that most of the companies mentioned above will lose more enquiries from prospective buyers than they are likely to gain from their website. This obviously defeats the whole purpose of your Web presence.
Another point that I'd like to make is that, with the single exception of Eidschun, the sites reviewed make no pretence at offering metal recovery from rinse waters. Quite apart from the fact that there may be re-usable metal ions or even metal recovery if done at this stage, especially important for gold plating, it would alleviate the burden on the waste water treatment plant and the volume of heavy-metals-rich sludge to dispose of as hazardous waste. This is not to say that some of these manufacturers cannot supply the equipment, just that they make no mention of it.
Brian EllisCyprusb_ellis@protonique.com
* There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was far faster than light;She set out one dayIn a relative wayAnd returned on the previous night.Arthur Buller, Relativity, in Punch 19 December 1923
