If you have had trouble accessing the Internet recently there are many reasons and the recent hacker attacks on national websites aren't helping, according to local Internet maven Gordon Ackley.
A combination of too few phone lines, information-highway traffic jams (in part a result of the attacks this week), the exponential growth of Internet traffic and normal technical problems have all converged, resulting in limited Internet access for many Virgin Islanders.
"We have 100 lines that should be installed any minute," Ackley said, explaining why so many people have been waiting, sometimes hours, to get on-line. "Vitelco is processing the order."
No one could have predicted the growth of the Internet, Ackley said. "The Internet as a whole is doubling every 90-120 days."
And with the recent attacks on e-commerce sites, portals and news publications, the problem has been exacerbated dramatically.
Ackley explained every time an Internet user requests a site a "packet" is sent. When the site cannot be accessed, as happened this week with several popular websites such as ebay and amazon.com , the user "clicks" again, sending another "packet." When the site finally does respond it sends back an equal number of "packets," creating a massive logjam.
On top of all of this, when normal phone lines on the U.S. mainland fail, it affects the whole system – dramatically slowing down the process.
A long-distance carrier's curcuit in Vero Beach, Fla., experienced problems Wednesday night. It is a line used by local Internet Service Provider VIAccess to route traffic from the Virgin Islands to sites elsewhere.
"We've been working on it since 7 p.m. last night (Wednesday)," Ackley said.
He said he hoped the problem would be solved sometime Thursday.
As far as the hackers are concerned, Ackley said just one person can write a program that with one single command can attack an e-company. Theoretically, according to Ackley, one person could start a chain reaction that could take down the entire Internet.
VIAccess provides a page on its website that tracks the status of lines in and out of the V.I. To check that page click here or go to www.viacess.net and under the members heading, click on "bandwidth status."
