Will you wait in line?

Please read the text and answer just a few simple questions following it. Thank you very much!

Imagine you are at a conference and you see hundreds of attendees trying to connect their laptops to the conference's wireless network - to check email, surf the web, or for file transfers. In such scenarios, research has shown that a wireless network will provide very poor performance to majority of the attendees and may even meltdown - leading to little or no Internet connectivity to conference attendees:-(

To prevent such network meltdowns, we propose to re-design the wireless network to provide access to only a subset of users at any given time for a fixed interval of time, while the remaining users wait for their turn. Every time a user requests network access, the user will be explicitly told how long he/she will have to wait and then for how long he/she can remain connected. Every user is granted an equal time interval to access the network every time the user is granted network access. Additionally, the network promises to grant access to users once they have waited for their assigned waiting times, and the user receives excellent network performance for the time it is connected.

Our question to you is, if the network asks you to wait before granting you access for a fixed interval, how long will it be before you get frustrated of no Internet access?

Remember, waiting will ensure that you receive excellent network performance, which means you can check and send email and also surf the web to your satisfaction; while the downside of not waiting is poor network performance or even no connectivity for you and many others. Also, keep in mind that each user will be told clearly how long their waiting time is and then for how long they can remain connected once they gain network access. For each of the following time intervals, please choose (as accurately as possible!) how long you will be willing to wait before you will be frustrated. Please leave us additional comments on this question in the text box below.

For 1 minute of network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

For 5 minutes of network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

For 10 minutes of network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

For 30 minutes of network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

For 1 hour of network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

For everlasting network access, how long will you wait?

  30 seconds  1 minute  5 minutes  10 minutes  30 minutes  1 hour

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This work is currently supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Nokia, and Intel. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of these organizations. We are very grateful to our sponsors - thank you!!!