broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction[1]
… broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction[1]Keywords: Internet, Communication
Today, we hear much of broadband communications on the Internet. Many are they who, benefiting from this technology, fall into the trap of thinking that everyone does. Our ears are battered by the media into thinking that broadband mobile telephony (the so-called 3G or third generation) is around the corner for all and sundry, so that we can surf the Internet at stunning speeds on our tiny handset for next-to-nothing.
Damn it all, most of us do not even have a high-speed interconnect on our desk-top computers, let alone on a mobile. Even if we do, we cannot always profit from it. So let's have a quick look at what it is all about. In order of increasing speed, today's possibilities for a desktop are:
dial-up modem, symmetrical, maximum speed 56kbit/s (very frequently much less);
ISDN, asymmetrical (one line) or symmetrical (two lines), maximum speed 128 kbit/s;
DSL, asymmetrical or (more rarely) symmetrical, maximum speed depends on various factors;
cable, asymmetrical, maximum speed depends on various factors;
satellite, asymmetrical, maximum speed depends on various factors;
various optical connections, symmetrical, maximum speed depends on various factors.
Before discussing these in greater detail, please let me explain what "symmetrical"means. It signifies that data can be sent to and from your computer at the same speed. Conversely, "asymmetrical" means that data going into your computer from other servers may be going rapidly, whereas the checksums going in the opposite direction go slowly. Because you may receive a Web page in large packets and the checksums are in very small packets, you don't notice how slow it is (frequently no faster than with a slow dial-up modem).
Of course, it may not stop here. Your company may have a T3 optical connection from its server, directly into the Internet backbone, but this is no guarantee that you will receive a rapid Internet connection into that computer sitting on your desk. You have another two limitations. The first is the bandwidth with which the company firewall can handle data and check for security. The second, more important, is the bandwidth of the company network. The first action of many is to check for e-mail, as they arrive in their office:this may mean hundreds of employees asking the network to work for them at the same moment: it would not be reasonable to assume that your e-mail will be downloaded to your hard disk, under these conditions, at the same speed, had you done the same thing, alone in the office, at midnight. Of course, you may not particularly notice the problem just for e-mail, but surfing the Net will be visibly slower if everyone else is using the network intensively, either for Internet or intranet activities, or just for the plain transmission of data from the server.
The first three systems in my list all use ordinary copper phone lines. As the first two are well-known, I won't comment on them other than to say that an estimated 85 per cent of users world-wide use dial-up networking with a modem of 56-kbit/s or less. For this reason alone, Web sites should always be designed with these users in mind. DSL or Digital Subscriber Line is not one system but five or six. The commonest one is Asymmetric DSL or ADSL, which offers a high bandwidth only for downloading and telephone modem speeds for uploading. This is what you will get if you subscribe to a low-cost service. The download speed depends on the line length between the nearest optical fibre and the modem,generally restricted to about 3-5km, depending on the service provider;typically it may be in the 500 to 1,500 kbit/s download range, ten to 30 times faster than a dial-up modem on the same line or five to 15 times faster than ISDN. As may be guessed, SDSL offers the same speed in both directions, usually about 1,500 kbit/s. The other ones need not be discussed here. So DSL is a sound choice for copper phone lines, on condition that your provider offers it for your location.
Cable networks rely on the coaxial cable systems used for distributing television. The download speed can be very variable from exceedingly high; if you are alone on the network to be connected to the Internet, down to horrendously slow; if all your neighbourhood is surfing at the same time. There is a limit to the bandwidth available on a single co-ax. For business purposes,this is not a real solution. The advantage for the home user is that it may be cheap – if you already have cable TV and your operator offers the service. Some operators require initial connection through a dial-up modem.
Quite frankly, I don't know how well satellite connections to the Internet work. I'm told that they are mostly asymmetrical, although I see no reason why symmetrical ones should not be feasible. However, I believe that it is horrendously expensive to use this means of communication, but I can see that it may be fast.
Like many things, there has to be a compromise: in this case, between the services available, the speed of connection in each direction and the cost. In the case of corporate use, the smallest companies will probably go for ISDN and the medium ones for SDSL, unless they foresee extremely intensive, professional use of the Internet, and they use a professional service provider to host their Web sites. (If you think that you can host a Web site over copper, in this day and age, forget it! You will be wasting your money.)
However, the story does not end there. The speed of a connection across the Internet depends on the weakest link. This may be the phone line/modem combination of a dial-up network, but it is not necessarily so. If we have to wait for the emitting server and its various connections to the Internet backbone, or even some of the backbone nodes, the difference in download speed between a phone line and an optical connection would be negligible. Unfortunately, this is all too often the big problem. If you have a Web site,make sure that the server has both the bandwidth and connections dimensioned, so that it can cope with the busiest traffic. Otherwise, you will lose business. Remember that, if someone does have a high-speed connection, he is used to fast downloads, so he becomes even more impatient if he has to wait for your home page to download.
So, let's get back to where I started, mobile telephony and the Internet. WAP(Wireless Application Protocol) has been a dismal failure, as many foretold. I predict that 3G will also be a dismal failure and will cause a total shake-up of the telecomms industry. Yes, there will be a possibility of having your combined palm-top/handset displaying Web sites while you are on the move. But will your accountants like your mobile phone bills of thousands of dollars or euros per month? It will be cheaper, by far, to stop your taxi at the nearest Internet caféfor five minutes while you pick up your e-mail, if your hotel room does not have e-mail facilities. Why? Because you don't have to help your telecomms operator pay back the interest on the zillions they paid for the privilege of offering a 3G service in the region (and only a handful of countries have even proposed to install it, so far). A little calculation with a pocket calculator will easily show that 3G mobile connections will be paying anything between $1 and $10 per minute for you to wait while a Web site downloads on to a mini-screen, plus roaming charges. As the number of takers, among the current 708 million mobile telephone subscribers, will be small at this price, so there will be little economy of scale. As the Good Book says, it could well "leadeth to destruction" of the notion of mobile surfing and, indeed, maybe also some telecomms operators, who are so heavily indebted for the privilege of offering you this luxury. Just remember the Iridium fiasco, which offered world-wide mobile telephony before GSM roaming was widely available: it collapsed because communications were too expensive, as well.
I'm experimentally changing my reviews this time. Rather than comment on a site, I'll briefly summarise some Web pages, whether they be home pages or embedded in a site, on a single theme, so I won't give an illustration or marks. To do this, I am interrogating Google with the key-words "electronics assembly environment-friendly": this gives me, at the time of writing, 748 results and I'll choose some of these more or less at random. The actual subjects, although pertaining to the single theme, vary over a wide range. Before I start, I would like you to e-mail me and tell me whether you prefer the site reviews on a subject, as in the past, or page reviews on a theme, as below. Without your feedback, I find it difficult to provide the information that suits you best. You'll find my e-mail address at the foot of this article.
This page goes straight to the point, although, by itself, it seems a little disjointed, taken in isolation. The company supplies bottled gases to many industries throughout the world, through their own subsidiaries, other companies or local bottling plants. The page in question, downloading reasonably rapidly,without being spectacular, is headed "environment" and offers two subjects: controlled atmosphere soldering and waste water treatment. The first of these summarises the advantages, but not the disadvantages, of wave soldering under nitrogen. The second subject suggests that carbon dioxide might be a good way of reducing the pH of waste water, in place of the more conventional hydrochloric acid. This could be a useful idea, remembering that many metal carbonates are insoluble or nearly so, thus making it unlikely for any residual hydroxide precipitate to re-dissolve. The company offers means of implementing this, as well as the gas.
Samsung, of course, need no introduction and it is interesting, on this page,to see the diversity of products whose production methods have been changed to comply with environmental considerations. I suspect, and this is a really mean statement on my part, that the motive behind Samsung's is perhaps not so much a care for the environment as a drive to give the company a "green" image and thus boost sales. I hope I'm wrong! What is really interesting about the page is that the company has really gone the whole hog, whatever the reason, by doing a Life Cycle Assessment on the products in question and they have reduced the impact during manufacture, reduced power requirements in service, reduced the quantities of materials used and increased the recyclability of the goods at end of life. This is a little of what we shall see more of in the future,although this company has not yet, apparently, implemented the "cradle-to-grave"environmental impact notion.
I'm a little bit embarrassed here. I did the original design of the Electrochemical Publications site several years ago. It really does show its age and it has been much altered since I handed it over. I cannot say I'm proud of the appearance, which must be amongst the more dismal and uncool offerings in our field of activity. Be that as it may, this page is an advance announcement of Jennie Hwang's forthcoming book Lead Free Solder. Of course, the author is among the best qualified persons to broach this subject and I look forward to being able to review this book when it rolls off the presses.
This page is a three-and-a-half-year old news release by Showa Denko K.K.,announcing their new "Super Juffit" process of producing lead-free printed circuit boards. At the same time, the process is said to eliminate the need for solder paste. The fact that I have not heard much about the process since possibly rates it in the "good marks for trying, but could do better"category! Notwithstanding, it shows, by its age, that eliminating lead has been targeted long before the WEEE Directive – and we are still trying!
Citizen watches are a well-known product. This page is essentially the history of how the company manufacturing them and other products, such as sphygmomanometers, obtained ISO 9000 series certifications in various factories. More important to this article's theme, it also touches on ISO 14001 certification. Unfortunately, the story seems to stop in November 1999, after the final audit. However, the important feature on this page is an environmental policy statement, worthy of adapting to other companies and countries. Please read this.
I'm going to cheat here, as I'll go well beyond the page itself. BPL Global Ltd holds a large Indian group of companies making all sorts of electronic consumer and semi-professional goods. Its page came up because their batteries are mercury- and cadmium-free, which may be meritorious but would not normally justify a mention here. What I'm going to say is not mentioned on their site: I visited one of their factories in Bangalore earlier this year and I'm delighted to announce that this factory is one of the rare ones in India that has completely eliminated the use of ozone-depleting solvents in their production of wound components, hybrid circuit assemblies and potted assemblies. This was done with the aid of a grant from the UNEP Multilateral Fund. As I said, it is useless trying to find out the details on their site, though (please excuse the"insider" information).
I suppose this page is not directly relevant to our theme, but I found it interesting, as it illustrates – in somewhat quaint English – the use of solar photovoltaic cells as an energy source in India. In a way, I suppose it is astonishing that such modern technology is being proposed for run-of-the-mill applications in a developing country, when it is almost spurned as being affected in many developed ones. However, the need is probably greater there, as mains electricity is not so widely distributed in the remoter rural regions. The number of different applications for this energy is surprising.
This page, almost entirely text, is about recycling in King County in Washington State. Some of the items are of general interest to the electronics assembly industry, as well as to everyone using computers. At the time of writing, this was the latest version of this newsletter. One earlier issue is also available (put RW34 instead of RW35 in the URL, but RW33 yields nothing). It would seem that King County authorities are eliminating waste on their server hard disk! By the time you read this, you may need to try RW36 or RW37 and the earlier ones may have been allocated to the great infinity of lost data, which would be a pity.
This is a list of European projects related to environmental matters. A number of these are of direct interest to the electronics industry. This would have been a wonderful general reference page, had the links worked. A very few of them will download a PDF page, many more will result in a 404-page unavailable failure (in German) and more again will take you to a portal page,which gives instructions on how to find what you are looking for, if you are lucky. This is enough to make one scream: what the heck's the use of hyperlinks that do not work?
Lackwerke Peters is a German company that needs no introduction to printed circuit manufacturers: they have long been a leading producer of solder masks. The company may not be quite so well known to assemblers, but they also make conformal coatings. The lead article on this page describes a water-based one,which is claimed to have excellent dielectric properties. Being almost organic solvent-free, there is an obvious environmental advantage but, there not being such a thing as a free lunch, there must also be disadvantages. I mooched around on other pages on the site and found the electrical characteristics of this aqueous polyurethane coating. They are good, without being outstanding, on the whole. However, the site is lacking in detail, so I guess the only way of finding out the disadvantages is to try it for oneself!
OK, I'll cheat again. This URL did not come up in the list. It is the site for the brand new IEE Professional Networks. Have a look at that one entitled"Engineering for a Sustainable Future". The Institution of Electrical Engineers is the world's largest learned society and covers all branches of electrical, electronics and manufacturing engineering. This is therefore very directly relevant to the rest of the pages that I've touched upon.
For my final piece of cheating, this is a Net group or, if you prefer it,forum dealing with all matters related to solvents. Because solvents are amongst the most polluting of all chemicals we use, whether in a flux, in a solder paste, for cleaning PCBs, stencils etc., in a conformal coating or whatever application, this forum, which I openly admit I moderate, is relevant.
Well, that's it for this issue. I've given you a wide range of subjects within the central theme. Do you like this approach? If so, or if you prefer my last Internet Commentaries, either way, do please drop me an e-mail. My address is below.
Brian EllisCyprusb_ellis@protonique.com
Note
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1 "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction,and many there be that go in thereat", The Gospel according to St Matthew,ch. 7, v. 13.
