Technology in Practice (TIP) Committee Archive

March 2001 Program Press Release

DSL and Broadband Internet Communications
March 27, 2001 at 6:00 pm
Offices of Richter Cornbrooks Gribble, 123 E. Baltimore Street

Baltimore, Maryland – On Tuesday, March 27, 2001, the AIABaltimore Technology in Practice Committee’s March meeting will feature two speakers on broadband Internet communication systems. As a successor technology to Dial-up Networking (DUN) and cable, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) offers significant increases in capacity, speed, accessibility, and value. Balanced against these benefits are differences in type and cost of hardware, installation, security systems and similar issues that must be understood.

Our first speaker, David B. Donaldson, has over 30 years of experience as a product development engineer and has served the Baltimore architectural community as a small systems consultant since 1986. Our second speaker, Vince Galek, of Lighthouse Network and Computer Support, holds numerous industry certifications and is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

Comparing and contrasting their experience, they will address the benefits and costs of full-time, higher bandwidth connections for Email, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications; briefly explain DSL's operation; compare DSL to DUN and cable; review DSL providers' availability and pricing; outline hardware and software specifications; describe installation realities; and examine computer and network security issues.

The AIABaltimore Technology in Practice Committee meets at 6 PM on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Our programs are planned to answer the challenges facing our practice today. To maintain our leadership in design, construction and planning, the profession must develop new paradigms, integrate rapidly changing technologies, specify new materials, and use new methods...all within the context of meeting client needs and public expectations. Join us as we examine and present the use of technology in building design and architecture practice. For more information on the program, or to be added to the TiPC mailing list, contact committee chair Geraldine Pontius, A.I.A. at gpontius@gcp-architect.com.