90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
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Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#2I remember getting hit with a ‘reasonable use policy’ on 256kbps where despite having an unlimited plan, they appeared to kneecap the heaviest users. I think the usage ended up being (iirc) 200gb over a month. These days I can do terabytes in an afternoon on research and nobody bats an eye.
But the excitement back then was way more than what I feel today, what a crazy period.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#3Before freeserv existed in the UK we didn't have a flat rate and a 800 number you could call into, you dialed a local number and paid by the minute, mum limited me to 2 hours a day and the she would take the RJ9 cable to enforce it.
One afternoon at lunch break at school I went down to the local elections store and used 2 days worth of lunch money to buy a secret RJ9.
After mum went to bed I'd sneak out my cable and dial up, spend all night online and hide it again in the morning.
Well... I ran up a 500 pound bill, I came home from school at the end of that month to a furious mum crying because we certainly couldn't afford it.
Mum called BT and explain what I'd done, and that it was unauthorized use, thank god BT nulled my contraband internet usage but it was a valuable lesson in doing as your parents say.
Really really really greatful freeserv popped up, although they eventually banned me for abusing "unlimited" (then I just got my uncle to create a new account for me).
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#4Ha, this reminds me of getting my first ISP account cancelled when I exceeded their web hosting bandwidth limit. The limit was 150 MB (I think per month? This was 1995, but even for back then, that seems awfully low…), and my pages racked up something like 450 MB of transfers. The network administrator was quite displeased with me.
I don’t know what’s wrong with Gene Forney, I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to reminisce about those times - even if only as a reminder of how far we’ve come since then!
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#5I remember getting hit with a ‘reasonable use policy’ on 256kbps where despite having an unlimited plan, they appeared to kneecap the heaviest users. I think the usage ended up being (iirc) 200gb over a month. These days I can do terabytes in an afternoon on research and nobody bats an eye. But the excitement back then was way more than what I feel today, what a crazy period.
> These days I can do terabytes in an afternoon on research and nobody bats an eye.
Except Comcast and the other shitty ISPs (including mobile carriers) which implement data caps, despite there being no technical reason for it*. At least back in the day there was an actual limit to the number of active simultaneous connections an ISP can handle.
* even for mobile, data caps don't make much sense, as they are monthly and per-user while network congestion is temporary and local. Better sell unlimited data plans with different speeds (priced accordingly), and only apply those speed limits if the local cell becomes congested.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#6Before freeserv existed in the UK we didn't have a flat rate and a 800 number you could call into, you dialed a local number and paid by the minute, mum limited me to 2 hours a day and the she would take the RJ9 cable to enforce it. One afternoon at lunch break at school I went down to the local elections store and used 2 days worth of lunch money to buy a secret RJ9. After mum went to bed I'd sneak out my cable and…
Bt let me off a huge bill, too. Those were the days...
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#7Hah yeah I remember my dad getting an e-mail like that back in like 1996.
We were paying for an unlimited connection, and then they tried to tell us that if we wanted to be connected for more than 4 hours/day, we'd have to upgrade to a business account that was like 4x the price. My dad told them to pound sand and we switched ISPs.
Pretty sure between 1995 and 1997, we switched dialup ISPs like 4 times because each tried to tell us we were abusing the "unlimited" access. And then at some point, cable modems came out and the entire thing became moot.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#8Ha, this reminds me of getting my first ISP account cancelled when I exceeded their web hosting bandwidth limit. The limit was 150 MB (I think per month? This was 1995, but even for back then, that seems awfully low…), and my pages racked up something like 450 MB of transfers. The network administrator was quite displeased with me. I don’t know what’s wrong with Gene Forney, I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want t…
> I don’t know what’s wrong with Gene Forney
Yeah, we don't have a copy of the email that was sent to him but the response indicates that he mistook it for some kind of argument. Very strange.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#9If they genuinely could tell it was not being actively used (or really, even if they wanted to limit to x hours whether used or not and that's what's going on here) why not just disconnect it, why resort to emailing the user?
It sort of implies that's not possible, but really? I can't imagine how you could be doing the routing, monitoring the connection, and yet unable to terminate it?
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#10What a silly email from a CEO.