The Wayward Packet

by Richard Murphy

 Back in 1993 I was thinking about how helpful it would be to be able to send e-mail to any company in San Antonio. At the time, the Internet had not yet climbed on board the booster rocket the media has so eagerly provided for it, so there were not that many organizations connected in San Antonio. 

In the  summer of 1991 I had started holding meetings with many different organizations and individuals concerned with the state of computer networking in San Antonio, so I knew there were many who desired e-mail and network access. This predates the World Wide Web explosion by a year, so that application was not driving my thought processes at the time. 

In any case, I decided to use a software tool and actual trace the route my e-mail would follow between SwRI and Performance Technology a few miles away. My packets first departed on a quick hop over to Houston, which was expected because all of our packets went to Houston first in those days. From the Sesquinet router in Houston the data began heading east, not exactly the right direction, eventually making it to Washington DC. Hum, maybe packets are like tax dollars! Once in Washington,  the packets jumped out of the MCI world and into the Sprint world and then they headed west. About 6 routers later, they would turn south in Ft. Worth and go straight down to Performance Technology. I figured my e-mail covered about 4000 miles and passed through 30 routers just to travel 6 miles across San Antonio.

There are two points to this story: time and distance are money and this  situation still exists today, although not between the two companies mentioned. The resource allocation and paths in the Internet are neither logical or effecient and high-bandwidth applications are precluded by this situation. While the mail may go through, the video (and now Web data) struggles and chokes. The logical way to build an internetwork is to build from the  metropolitan level upwards.