After all those years of trying to squeeze lo-fi audio and video through a 56k modem, it seemed like freedom had arrived when broadband showed up here on the scenic North Shore of Long Island as the Millennium loomed. Naturally, we rushed to The Wiz electronic super store, forked over for a cable modem and a two-year service contract with Optimum Online and got ready to bathe beneath the sunny skies of streaming plenty and Internet ease.

Storm Clouds Gather
Alas, those skies too soon became more than partly cloudy, broadband narrowed significantly, and unease became the word of the day.

Why? Because broadband turned out to be a lot more dicey than anyone expected, as it still is for many residential users who aren't plugged into the hot, volcanic mouth of a T-1 line.

First, there was the matter of choice of services. There wasn't any. In our neighborhood, cable was the only game in town - we were beyond that magic three miles or so (depending on whom you talked to) from a telephone company booster station, so DSL was out of the question. Even nearby, where it was available, it was expensive and had a months-long waiting list. Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) didn't even bother to return our calls.

Share and Share Alike
That was too bad, because cable services are area networks which share everybody's signal, a signal that can get overcrowded and lack the privacy or security of a dedicated single line. DSL might have been preferable.

But only a year ago, when cable was new on the block, there weren't too many people using it, and all was well. It worked great - truly a breath of fresh air. The content available to enjoy on it was still pretty terrible, but the connection was always on, didn't tie up the family phone line, and it felt like flying.

This fall, however, it began to feel like that pristine, out-of-the-way resort town that suddenly everybody has discovered. The signal first slowed down appallingly, became increasingly erratic, and then began cutting off entirely in high-usage times of day. Calls to tech support wound up on hold with bad Muzak in the background, and when somebody actually answered, it was usually not anybody with their lights on. There were only a few staffers who had even a clue of what might be the matter. The most memorable agent simply explained to us that a lot of people had trouble and cable wasn't for everybody - he actually said that – and seemed to think it resolved the problem! Take two aspirin and don't call me in the morning…

Numb Nodes
Attempts to speak to higher-ups were repeatedly turned aside, until at last we began to hint darkly at bad publicity and lawsuits from the giant media corporation we worked for (we made up several, it’s a good ploy) until finally a real human surfaced and we got results. There is usually a caring human being in there somewhere, if you look long enough. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, we suppose.

The problem? It was "trouble with the nodes" - read that: too many customers, not enough assigned bandwidth and maintenance. It's fixed - here, for the moment. Whether the less squeaky wheels nearby are still in the dark, who knows? The moral: when in doubt squeak, then squeak louder...