YouTube is

buffering, Facebook won’t update, Google barely loads. The Internet

is slow, but what can you do?

The standard

procedure for fixing such things involves restarting the router,

maybe the modem, restarting your wireless card, and in a last-ditch

attempt, restarting your computer. What does this solve? Not much,

besides wasting about three minutes of your time. The speed of the

Internet is something you can’t really control, but something we as

a group of users can. Complicated? Very.

Whether or not

your Internet is going “fast” has several different factors going

into it. What type of connection do you have, what time are you

using it, are you trying to do something that requires a faster

connection than you have?

Although a good

majority of students are on Iowa State’s network, quite a few of

you probably have Qwest, ICS or Mediacom.

Those of you on

Qwest and ICS are in luck because you’re using what is called DSL

and you get a “direct” line to the multiplexer — where all of the

phone lines get connected to the main network — whereas with

Mediacom cable you are sharing you connection with your neighbors,

limiting the amount of speed you can all have at the same

time. Both of these have their limits — where DSL gives you a

direct line, Mediacom cable gives you more speed.

All network

infrastructure aside, when your Netflix suddenly stops streaming

for what appears to be no reason, you don’t care about how your ISP

has the network set up, you just want to continue watching

“Ironman” in 720P — or 1080p with 5.1 for you PS3 owners out

there.

And that’s the

current issue at hand, the United States as a whole has slow

Internet. We’re the country that invented the Internet, and Japan

and South Korea can run circles around us in terms of broadband

speeds.

The reason your

Internet is slow is because of how hard it is to run wires to

everyone’s houses and apartment buildings. You have seen ads for

high-speed fiber-optic networks that have been built in your city;

Google wants to start doing this nationwide.

The issue at hand

is how easy it is to run a wire to a neighborhood and how big of a

nightmare it becomes to run that same wire to everyone’s home and

each apartment building. This is just part of the problem — a large

reason the Net we have now is so slow is because of the lack of

competition.

Why invest in

your network if your customers have nothing else to switch to? This

needs to stop, and the solution starts with us.

I have a business

proposition for you: Let’s create an Internet Service Provider.

Exhibit A: <a href=

“http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/13/chattanooga-becomes-home-to-1gbps-internet-service-just-350-pe/”>

Chattanooga, Tenn.

The residents of

Chattanooga decided as a city that they didn’t like having such

slow networks and decided to build their own fiber-optic network

and basically made the Internet a utility like water or

electricity. This allows for government-subsidized Internet, paid

for by Chattanooga, used for by Chattanooga.

Several other

cities nationwide are doing similar things with wireless. It’s

called WiMax and it’s

like the wireless Internet that we’re all used to, but this one

covers the entire city. All of these are great ideas, but it’s up

to us as consumers, citizens and users to band together and

decide.

Do we want to

settle for mediocre Internet that slows to a crawl when everyone

gets on Facebook from 9 to midnight every night, or do we want

change? That’s on you to decide.