The end of the tunnel
This is a historic day in our school board. After years of preparation, negotiation and reinked schematics, the light went on in our fibre optic this morning. Nothing we can look at; I even brought along sunglasses just in case, but the flickering LEDs in the new section of rack are proof that enough patience and money will finally end up with a light at the end of the tunnel.
We’ve been the poor cousins in this whole project. The school boards with large populations and small physical areas have had their strands in place for years now. We had to face a situation that was diametrically opposite. Imagine a network that covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of the Maritime provinces. Now, supply a budget that is constrained in the politest of terms.
Add in a group of greedy contractors, navel-gazing civil servants and bills that cover everything from tree-trimming to access to virtual rooms at some point in the future. Spice things up with fifty dollar words like emphyteutic. Play the blame game with corporations that many not even exist in two years time. Order equipment with which you have no familiarity, and then learn that the person who did the “patching” years ago did not know how to read. Grimace and bear it. All will come to pass.
The whole network does not come alive in one moment; we’ll be turning on sections one building at a time, and the final sections are still not built, but today I contacted the web server in a photocopier across town, and it was FAST. No acronym. Just FAST.
I can only stand back and applaud, as the work wasn’t mine. I’m just a passenger, but the train of packets got a whole lot faster today.
