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RESOURCES
Huntington Township Chamber of Commerce offers links and info. Kings
Park Community Comes to Aid of WTC Volunteers
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September 14, 2001 When the World Trade Center crumbled Tuesday, Suffolk County's internet site became a casualty as well. According to a spokesman, the County's hub, west of Garden City, was housed in the World Trade Center and was destroyed. As a result the county's web site remains down. This not only cuts links to information about the county but hampers internal communications as well. Both the county intranet and internet have been affected. No e-mail can be sent or retrieved through the system. The "World Wide Web" is so-named because it resembles a web or network with points where traffic meets and is distributed in different directions. Joe Haulton of Total Web Host, likened it to the railroad system that cris-crosses the country. "You can get somewhere by taking a direct route or hopping around different cities," he said. The internet works essentially the same way. Information follows a path and if the path is blocked it will attempt to find another path. The shortest distance, so to speak, is not necessarily the best path, because of the volume of traffic. Fluidity depends on two elements; the telecommunications path (wires) and the hardware that directs the signals. According to Haulton, if the County's hub was in the WTC, its communications are faced with a huge bottleneck. "You can compare it to reducing the number of lanes through the Lincoln Tunnel," he explained. "If it goes from six to one, not a whole lot of traffic will get through." He said the main telecommunications hardware was relocated to the WTC from the Empire State Building and with the loss of that control center the problem will remain for some time. "The path to those IP (internet protocol) addresses may only be able to get there through equipment that is no longer in service." Some staff have personal e-mail accounts which they can use for occasional communications but they are not suitable for official purposes, sources say. Also many workers do not want their personal e-mail addresses made public. While most people were aware that the intranet e-mail was down, officials were surprised to learn the internet site was also affected. Officials were not able to say when the site would be re-routed and online. In the interim, the public is advised to contact County agencies by telephone or fax.
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