Ever wonder what the 'www' in all of those internet addresses that you've been typing into your browser really means? No, it does NOT refer to the 'world wide web', although this is what they'd like you to believe. It is part of an acronym, actually - one that dates back to an ancient order of nomadic prophets who had a secret mystical saying that wise elders would enigmatically offer as a greeting to neophytes who crossed their paths as they made their way on long journeys into the lonely desert. With a bowed head and cryptic smile the prophet would mutter to the stranger, 'Hey,TryThisPath:!! WorldWearyWanderer ..." And then the wizened elder would stop and, with her bare toes, silently circumscribe a strange circle in the sand - one with nine points and a web-like criss-crossing of inter-connected lines. Although the precise manner in which these diagrams were drawn has been lost over time, and the more profound meaning of the ritual itself is still hotly debated, the acronym lives on as a convention - alive and well in contemporary 'virtual' reality. It has achieved a rather dubious state of immortality, not unlike that which awaited Messrs. Chevrolet and Cadillac on the by-ways and highways of modern America.

So from WHENCE does the weariness(and wariness) of the contemporary web-traveler arise? Need one even ask? Who amongst us has not happily ventured out into this 'global village' anticipating a world of immanent discovery and enhanced 'interactivity' only to run up against a virtual brick wall? A continual stream of rather ugly '404 file not found' error messages seem to lurk around every corner. One waits forever for pages to download, staring stupidly at the screen as if mesmerized by the little hour glass - the only real function of which, it seems, is to remind us that time is slipping away and we actually do have better things that we could be doing. And then, just when the page does load and you think that you have finally arrived at your long awaited destination, you find that

the whole thing has locked up - and there is no response, none at all, no matter what combination of keys you frantically press. And so you sit there wistfully looking at what you WOULD have liked to read, your nose pressed up against the window like a street urchin eyeing the turkey on the rich man's table in a Dickens story. 'Why bother', you might well ask? And perhaps you are right. But there are potential benefits to be realized in utilizing this particular form of technology. It holds out the promise of new extended communities-of-interest in which interactive participation is supported, and this would make the effort to learn how to navigate the web worth while in the end. Maybe. In making the web the home for this journal we risk imagining that the internet offers a truly unique new opportunity for community-building. And in order to ease the way of those travelers who have decided to visit our site we have put together some information that we have found useful in navigating the internet - a kind of 'travel kit', if you will.

What's the SOURCE of the problem? Lets imagine that you've experienced a problem while surfing the internet. Doesn't take much of an imagination, does it?. Perhaps you can't access a site, or it takes forever to download a file, or you crash. What, you may wonder, is the source of such problems? Unless you have information that is only available through special software that can diagnose the source of a problem, you may NEVER know its cause. And when you don't know where a problem originates you are likely to blame the nearest target - in this case, the web site that you were aiming at accessing in the first place. But the difficulties that you experience on the web are not always caused by the web site itself. In general, there are five factors to take into consideration when you attempt to understand and locate the source of your web surfing problem: 1. The WEB SITE itself - comprised of various 'pages' generated by a set of interlinked computer programs, written in various 'scripts' and/or 'languages', with auxiliary graphics and music files; for example, our site, 'the Enneagram and the MBTI'. 2. The computer that is the 'HOST' for the web page. It provides various types of 'support' for it and 'serves' the web site's files to you upon request. 'Nettaxi.com' once was the host for one of our sites; now 'tap3x.net' is. And 'Delphi' hosts the chat room and message board. 3. Your Internet Service Provider or 'ISP', who provides you with your internet phone connection; AOL, for example, is a well-known ISP. 4. The 'INTERNET' in general (the interconnected network of computers and phone lines that comprise it). 5. Your PC (personal computer) - with all of its software (your web 'browser', operating system, and so forth) and hardware (eg, your modem, cpu, monitor, sound cards, etc). Your hardware even includes the telephone lines in your house - which can vary widely in quality and performance - effecting the performance of your computer. Although sometimes the problems you experience may be the result of a combination of factors involving all five areas, it is also not uncommon for problems to be caused exlusively by a failure in ONE of these areas alone. If the web server is down, for instance, it doesn't matter what else you do or what kind of computer you have, you won't be able to log onto the web site that the server hosts although you still may be able to access the files from the site that your machine has previously saved to hard disk (i.e. 'cached'), giving the ILLUSION that you are interacting with the site itself!.

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT - but if not, WHY not !? Here's an analogy that's helpful in understanding the kind of situation that you are up against when you sign onto the web, expecting to 'surf' it. Imagine that you are cooking a special dinner and find that you are missing a necessary ingredient. So you send your teenage son to the local grocery store for the missing item. But he takes longer than you had expected. What could possibly have gone wrong, you wonder? The kid could have gotten caught in rush hour traffic on the way to the store, or on the way back [ie, the INTERNET was crowded with other surfers, all demanding to use the same limited facilities]. Or the vehicle that the teenager is driving is an old model and no longer can travel as fast as it once did [ie, your personal computer, or modem, operates at a slower speed than is the current standard - a 28k modem downloads twice as fast as a 14k modem, generally speaking]. Or perhaps the car is a gas guzzler and is always running out [you don't have enough available 'RAM'- you've only got 8MB of RAM, and so every time you get to a site, the machine stalls]. Or the car overheats [your CPU or 'central processing unit', lets say it is a 200 mega hertz pentium machine - is overwhelmed and can't cope with the strenuous download you are asking it to do - so it drops important information]. Or maybe there is construction on the road (i.e., your ISP, or Internet Service Provider, can't (or refuses to) handle the traffic that it is experiencing, so there is a jam there. Or maybe there was a bottle-neck, or a road block [ie, 'all of the phone lines are busy']. And then there are the problems that can occur once you get to where you wanted to go. Perhaps the mall [i.e., the computer that 'hosts' the web site] was crowded when your kid got there, or the parking lot was so full that they had to 'park a mile away' and walk - and that all took extra time. Or its a holiday, and the mall, God forbid, is closed! In which case the teen returns empty handed! Or perhaps the hold up was in the store itself [ie, the web site]. The store layout [the computer programs running on the site) may have been poorly designed, and your kid couldn't find the right aisle. Or they now stock only the hottest new items [ie, they use 'javascript' or 'java'] and your kid didn't have the resources to purchase it [ie, you don't have Netscape 3.0 or higher, which supports JavaScript]. In all of these case, your son comes back empty handed. In other words, you don't get the file that you were trying to access. Now all of these glitches can and do happen when we send someone to the store for us. And we are likely to become irritated when they come back too late or without the sought-after ingredient. What do we do then? Well, we normally, at the very least, expect a good explanation - hoping that the trustworthy child did not, in fact, bump into friends and become distracted, or make a wrong turn, or forget to bring money [which is analagous to what technological support staff in the computer world refer to as 'user error' - ie, did I fail to type in the right 'address' on the computer?].

Diagnostics In the 'real' world, the physical world in which grocery stores exist, it is usually relatively easy to identify the causes of our difficulties. Problem solving of this sort has become second nature to us. But this is not so in the 'virtual' reality which we inhabit when we surf the web. Most of us who are on the net have NO IDEA why a problem crops up. Speaking personally, for me there were times (and they were not too long ago) when I did not realize that - the Internet Service Provider that I had at the time was booting me (and thousands of others) off-line, for 'no good reason' - I had thought that the problem was my modem; my 8MB personal computer did not have enough RAM to finish loading some longer pages or more complex graphics - but I attributed the problem to the site I was visiting; the web host (who 'serves' the files that constitute the web site I was visiting) was 'down' - I thought there was a problem in the design of the web site itself, or its computer programs, which caused me to be unable to download the files; a particular brand of 'web browser' that I was using did not interpret 'javascript' in a way that allowed me to experience what the programmer intended - I thought the programmer was sloppy; because my monitor was set to display fewer colors, what I was seeing was not what other persons were seeing - yuck, I thought, was the illustrator going over the deep end?; or certain web site 'host' machines did not provide on-site 'support' for certain programming languages that the website designer had it in mind to use - so they had to seek support elsewhere, which took more time. I thought the 'internet must be busy'. But, in actuality, it wasn't. This list could go on; we have only dealt here with the tip of the iceberg. But the real question, after all, is 'Are there any remedies available?' First, as a web 'surfer', it is necessary to become a little bit more educated about what the VARIABLES are - and which variable has what kind of impact on our experience. When, as a user, I have a little bit of knowledge, I can begin to make educated interventions that will enhance my web surfing. Below is a list of some suggested pathways to enhanced information, and some interventions. And please keep in mind that although computer hardware and software can be costly, not all remedies are are expensive or difficult to implement! So what simple diagnostic tools are available that can help me to analyze where the surfing difficulties I am experiencing come from? This is the question that we turn our attention to below.

TRAFFI C You may think that you don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind blows, but without accessing one of the internet 'traffic report' services, you may never be sure how much of your problem is do to an overall 'congestion' on the net, and how much is due to other factors. Try the service in the column to the right, which provides CURRENTinformation (notice the date and time). The graphs are clickable, by the way, and will take you to more specific information regarding the traffic on the internet in different parts of the world. Is virtual traffic congested in Norway at this time of day? Or is there internet gridlock in Yonkers?

Higher values indicate faster connections

Is There a Doctor on the Net? There are also many types of diagnostic software available. 'Net Medic' is a desktop application that monitors all five of the areas mentioned above, as you surf the web. It provides you with dials, not unlike the ones on the dashboard of your car, which graphically illustrate the condition of your ISP, the responsiveness of your web host (or 'server'), the density of internet traffic, and the strain on your CPU. It does all this WHILE you are trying to load a file from a particular web site - often with results that will surprise you. Does the 'counter' on the page you are trying to access page significantly slow down loading the page or is your ISP failing you? Is your modem working properly? How many 'hops' does the information take as it travels from the server to your personal computer? Net Medic not only answers these questions, it analyses the data, points out patterns in the performance problems that you are experiencing, and prescribes remedies - some of which can be performed immediately. Watching the dials can, ironically, be more fascinating than visiting some of the pages that you are trying to access! To see what the gauges on the Net Medic dashboard look like, click here - but, before you do, remember that the size of the file that you are trying to access may also directly impact your experience - larger files taking larger to download. Graphics files, in particular, can be quite large. The graphics file to which the above is more than twice as large (44k) as the rest of this entire article (18k), which is why we provide it as a clickable item, giving the reader the choice whether to download it.

If Its Still TOO SLOW!! If you are using an older or slower computer, you may want to learn how to 'turn off' its graphic display capacity, so that your pages load WITHOUT the graphics files that the programmer intended to display. You do this by changing the 'preference' settings in your browser. There are also browsers that are designed specifically for use with the 'low end' or older machines that have limited RAM and are thus less speedy - or for individuals with handicaps. A Norwegian company, 'Opera', provides one such product. It enabled me to actually surf the web with a 486 machine that only had 4MB of RAM, a dinosaur amongst contemporary computers. I also had to turn off the graphics, and wait for a relatively long time for files to download, and tolerate frequent crashes. But I could do it. Opera also operates very well on new and faster machines, by the way.