My Boyfriend Is A Geek
For those of you who don't know, my boyfriend, Don, is a monster tech geek.  If you remember War Games from the 80's and you remember Matthew Broderick's character, the kid hacker who hacked his way into the government computers, well, that's Don.  He hasn't hacked a government system, but he's been head-to-head with computers since he was 10 and he understands their inner workings in ways that very few do. And, because he has been a trainer in the past, he's good at taking geek speak and turning it into language I can understand.  For instance, he explained to me that "pinging" another computer through the internet was like playing an electronic version of Marco Polo.  Now THAT I got.

How The Internet Used To Work
Today, because I knew it would entertain him, I called him at his work at WAAV, Inc. and asked him about a problem that a friend was having with her internet service.  It seems that her service went down for a while and then, when it came back up, she chould get everywhere she needed - except to her own website to update her blog and site pages.  She can email her assistant who is several states away and her assistant can update her blog, but she can't get to it herself.  (Yet another plug for the benefits of virtual assistants.)  Her ISP blamed it on a downed server in the route that she uses to get from her computer to the webpage server.  I said that this couldn't possibly be because the Internet was dynamic - that was the whole point was to have a communication system that couldn't be taken down by taking out a single server.  Turns out that this is no longer true.

How The Internet Works Today
Don explained to me that they used to do dynamic addressing of packets (an information packet is how the Internet transfers data from one place to another), but the process of the routers asking one another about the best route to take was taking up as much as 20% of the total bandwidth of the internet AND it didn't always get the best route right.  So today, most ISPs have set routes that they use to get you from point A to point B and if a server goes down in the middle of that route, you are in fact temporarily out of luck.  Now most servers will come back up within an hour or two - since they will have people screaming at them to get it done.  The one my friend webt through though has not come back up in three days.  It's not looking good for the home team.  This means that her ISP (Comcast in this instance) has to reroute her to get her a way to her website.  It's a classic case of "you can't get there from here".  Don tells me that if there is a major outage (think the entire east coast goes dark), then there are scripts that will automatically reroute the service, but on an individual server basis, it has to be done by hand.  

Looking To The Future
As I think about a server going down and not coming back, I can only think that the server farm company is going out of business.  This is the only reason I (a lowly non-geek) can imagine that they would not replace the server.  And it makes me think that we may be seeing more of this as the economy slides and more companies close their doors.  So if you suddenly can't get from point A to point B but you can get almost everywhere else, consider that you too might have a missing server in your route. It's the first time I've ever heard of it, and Don assures me that it's rare, but it could happen. 

Even if you never need the information, it's a fun little tidbit to know - don't cha think?

Get my book The Consultative Real Estate Agent: Building Relationahips that Create Loyal Clients, Get More Referrals and Increase Your Sales.

Do you want information on how to coach your clients through the sales process? Sign up for my FREE 10-Part Audio training program.

Kelle Sparta, author of The Consultative Real Estate Agent, is one of the top innovators in the industry. She thinks outside of the box and she does it with style, which is how she managed to sell 25 houses her first year in the business in a market just like this one in an area where she had no sphere of influence! Kelle's innovative techniques took her to the top of the market in 1993 and they can take you there now. Kelle has coached agents from around the country who have been producing as much as $45 million per year in gross volume. Now she brings her unique style of real estate to you. Her dynamic presentation skills, high energy approach, and brilliant new ideas are sure to be the highlight of your day. Kelle is the founder of Sparta Success Systems, a real estate training company that provides products, coaching and training to empower agents and brokers to create lives and businesses they can love. For more information, visit her website at http://www.spartasuccess.com/. © 2008, Kelle Sparta.