Internet suffers from seasonal access disorder

When the temperature drops, dial-up connections to the Internet rise-and so do call failure rates, according to the latest monthly performance report from independent Internet watchdog Inverse Network Technology.

Inverse's most recent survey of dial-up ISPs found that evening call failure rates-from 6 p.m. to midnight local time-jumped in November 1998, posting their biggest increase since January 1998. Approximately 8.6% of evening calls to Internet service providers failed to connect in November, compared with a 6.8% failure rate for October 1998.

Chris Roeckl, a researcher with Inverse, attributes the November rise to both inclement weather and the increased popularity of on-line holiday shopping.

"Traffic builds in the fall months," Roeckl said. "It peaks in January when people start turning on those new computers, stays up for a while, and then goes back down in the summer." The lowest failure rate since Inverse began its study in 1996 came in August 1998, when only 3.8% of dial-up calls to the Internet failed to connect.

Network managers and traffic engineers have recognized winter spikes and are learning to work around them.

"In addition to the fact that the nights are longer, you typically have more people added to your customer base than at any other time of the year," said Ray Smets, president of BellSouth.net.

Where you find computers as holiday gifts, you'll also find aggressive marketing efforts to get new computer users signed up to a particular service provider.

Advertising increases the impact of the first-time computer market, said Bobby Alaniz, director of network engineering for SBC Internet Services. "Our company typically puts more effort into advertising around the holidays. Hopefully, it's all timed gracefully so that we've got the capacity to meet that new demand."

No last-minute maneuvers will alleviate an oncoming log jam. "You've got to be at least four to six months out in your planning cycle," said Alaniz. "That's because you've typically got delays in getting additional circuitry from your local exchange, getting hardware from your vendors and integrating it into your network."

The Inverse study said SBC beat the industry average for call failure in November, with a 24-hour total rate of less than 3%.

BellSouth.net also was a better-than-average performer. The ISP sat down to forecast winter usage levels six months ahead, projecting from last year's actual traffic, said Smets. The company wound up adding network equipment and facilities such as new high-capacity trunks.

The growth in electronic commerce, particularly at the end of the year, will have to figure large in any service provider's projections of future winter traffic spikes, said Smets. Not only does usage go up when more customers buy on-line, but sessions are longer as people browse catalogs and order merchandise.

"In the telephone industry, they say you don't plan for snow days," said Smets. "But in the Internet industry, you have to plan for long evenings and higher usage. It's really an art as well as a science."

The best service providers are getting better at that art. The Inverse study found that the evening failure rate in November improved almost 20% over a year earlier, when 10.5% of dial-up calls in the evening failed to log on.

"In early '97, call failure rates during evening hours were in the one in four range," Roeckl said. "Now what we're seeing is around one failure in 10 in the busy Internet months and close to 5% in the summer. So we've seen significant year-over-year improvement."

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