Hi Speed Internet

THis morning I found some notes I made back in 2000 after we all survived the Y2K "crisis". I was researching alternatives to our dial up modem access where we were limited mostly to 19.6 modem speed. I was talking with Puru about possibilities of adding various methods to give us faster internet access. Mind you, I am not a formally trained techno-geek here so much of what I was finding was mostly "greek" to me. ISDN and DSL were interesting acronyms which mainly suggested faster connections and a little envy of those who had it.

Being so far removed from the city in a very rural area, we were running our whole Rajarsi park network on a 56k special modem at the time. I was trying to find out about email servers and web servers and satellites...

We experimented with home satellites like Starband and DirecPC (or DirecWay) but the latency periods caused problems and the uploads were very slow.

All this to say that now, in 2006, I marvel at our Village wide DSL system available to anyone who can afford a few dollars a month and has a phone line. I understand that 25 years ago here all that was available was 1 (one) pay phone down by the market.

Our ministry has T1 speed internet access and WiFi. Guests can come to the Expanding Light guest retreat and use the business center and WiFi if they wish. My technical staff can connect in through secure private networks to our business network. Everyone has email if they choose. We show our Sunday services and other program through web videos. Many thousands of souls find this ray of light because of all of this.

It is truly a marvel, when we step back and see how far we have come.