I remember images loading one line at a time and I get irritated at less than 40Mbps.
Limitations of available technology at the time =/= limitations generally caused by shitty ISPs and/or IT teams not maintaining their infrastructure and equipment properly.
We were also loading 30kb webpages. Try to load anything from the last 10 years over 33,600
Yeah, but thats in large part due to the fact that people stopped trying to optimize, because why optimize when most people have gigantic firehose connections that can just use their raw bandwidth to overcome issues.
A similar problem exists with other aspects of computing, lack of optimization and just brute forcing it with modern GPU/CPU power
there’s a few videos on youtube about people loading up dialup and trying to use today’s internet on it. It is not fun.
You know what’s worse that no internet? Slow internet.
I can still hear that image.
Christ, that sound lives rent free in my head
Dialing attempt 4 of 5
“Guess I’ll check my email tomorrow…”
Twenty minutes to download a 1MB image.
Yes, really. 9600 baud modem.
ASCII art was popular then, and before: https://www.asciiart.eu/
My kid actually complained that the internet is slow when he was getting 24 MB/s on a Steam download.
When I was his age I got 300 bytes/s.
There was a time when you either had phone service or internet. But not both at the same time.
And if some bastard tried calling you when you were on the internet, they weren’t your friend any more.
There was a code you could use when dialing your provider to disable the 2nd call tone for a call. Put that in your phone number for dialing and your friends would get a busy signal, as god intended.
edit: that still exists, *70
I BEGGED my mother for a second line, so I could stay online longer, but she wouldn’t get one :(
In the UK we had free numbers that would cut out after an hour of use and you had to redial, so you had to do downloads or uploads is chunks
ouch, I made ISD calls to Sydney after 10pm from Northern Australia to get the cheaper rates and had a 24k modem into one of the only ISPs in Australia at the time, IBM. I emailed someone in NASA once just because I came across their email address (in a Scientific American article I think?) … and they replied I was like… my jaw dropped when a reply came and I was like … this is the future and here we are, i never once imagined how shit it could get.
The early Internet brings back memories, when I’m using Linux. Only been on Linux for 3 years (Mint).
Oh god I feel old. Please don’t remind me of that.
I loved the original NetZero. You could use the ISP phone number and set up a manual connection with Windows dialer… viola! Free dial-up with no ads or shitty dialer software!
Yes, we really did have to download things uphill both ways back then. I remember leaving the computer on overnight to download a game that was, like, 40 mb.
In the morning I got there and it had crashed at like 98% lol
My dad was pissed at me for “wasting electricity” the real OG data center hater over here.
I believe broadband is, generally, a net negative for the human species.
Its always on, leading to a constant conveyor belt of fresh horrors.
Its always on, so theres no seperation from internet and anything else, because you can’t just log out of the internet anymore.
High speed/Always on internet means goods we used to own physically and use as we please, have been converted into goods we just perpetually rent and can be taken from us at any time.
always on broadband was genuinely the turning point in ruining the internet.
It’s what brought internet to the masses. That’s what always kills <any subject>.
Dialup noises still give me tingles. Like I’m about to experience something fun, new, and crazy soon.
