In the 90s I had internet at home at a time when almost all of my friends (school children) didn't even have a computer. Trying to explain the internet to someone who doesn't have a computer is still one of the most alien experiences of my life.
90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
41–50 of 149 posts
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#42Hah 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 t…
Except now you're limited to 2 TB/mo with no alternatives.
Depends on your area.
I'm in a suburb outside Portland, OR and have Ziply Fiber which sells me symmetrical gigabit with no data cap for like $80/month.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#43I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually I got a letter from my ISP and it was a thick binder with "netiquette". How to behave online. And a letter saying basically "we see everything you're doing, cut it out". They probably had complaints on the abuse address of my home IP, since I was a total moron…
Same here! I didn't learn my lesson, of course. The moment we upgraded to a DSL line, I port scanned even more machines, way faster, which led to Qwest shutting down our account, which was only re-enabled after several days worth of apologetic phone calls from my mom.
Love ya, mom. Sorry I was an idiot.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#44Hah 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 t…
Except now you're limited to 2 TB/mo with no alternatives.
Here in Australia we have been pretty blessed with pretty good ISPs. In the earlier days we had Internode (locally here in Perth it was iiNet for me for a while :)), which had a Usenet mirror (!) and were the first ISP I believe to offer ADSL2 in AU. Unfortunately in 2011 they were bought out by a major competitor and it went downhill.
Nowdays we have Aussie Broadband, which has an active tech community on Whirlpool (AU Broadband forums, fondly called Whingepool). Phil Brett as their cofounder made this an incredible company, and he recently left.
I pay $149AUD/month for "1000/50Mbps Unlimited", which I haven't had an email yet for my usage (I use around 4-10tb/month).
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#45I almost missed my first (and most important) job offer in the summer of 2000 because I was on dial-up almost 24 hours a day and my phone was constantly busy. I applied for a new job and left my home phone number which was also my dialup line. Thankfully my new boss was able to finally get through, and my career in tech was born! And it wasn't even 56K because our phone lines were crap. I would get about 28K on a goo…
I had to share a line with my parent's business. I bought this little box off ebay that listened for the call waiting signal and then dropped the internet to let the call through. Had to remember to disable the disable call waiting option in modem settings IIRC.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#46I worked for a dial up ISP as a network engineer around the same time frame mentioned in the article. A standing instruction was to, as time allowed, manually look at usage across members and force resets on any long standing connections! Mainly this was because it was a small company and this freed up the number of possible incoming connections to avoid busy signals. I was very junior and cringe at how naively unawa…
It's not necessarily unethical - it's a problem of resource allocation under constraints. You can either let the person who stays connected for weeks stick around, or free up space for less frequent users who are also paying customers.
The overcommit ratio for its phone lines and modems is a knob the business selects, and it's directly linked to their profits.
There's clearly an incentive to skimp here and resort to underhanded tactics. If you've promised unlimited use to the customer, it's definitely unethical.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#47I worked for a dial up ISP as a network engineer around the same time frame mentioned in the article. A standing instruction was to, as time allowed, manually look at usage across members and force resets on any long standing connections! Mainly this was because it was a small company and this freed up the number of possible incoming connections to avoid busy signals. I was very junior and cringe at how naively unawa…
It's not necessarily unethical - it's a problem of resource allocation under constraints. You can either let the person who stays connected for weeks stick around, or free up space for less frequent users who are also paying customers.
It is unethical to tell people something based on assumptions you made and then do something else when it doesn't work out.
If it comes down to kicking people off, you need to reimburse them for their payment and say 'don't come back' and keep only the 'good' customers, or you need to invest in more phone lines and hope you make the money back.
The solution is not to advertise one thing then appeal to 'but we actually meant this other thing' when it doesn't work out the the way you think it should.
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#48As an small ISP owner in the 90s, there was no way to win. Incoming phone lines were a considerable hunk of your expenses so you wanted to have enough available at peak time in the evenings to not have busy signals. Smaller POPs may have only had a couple dozen phone lines. For the very vast majority of subscriber, they'd dial up for 2-6 hours, browse the web and whatnot, and disconnect. I hated the "unlimited" thing…
Wouldn't another solution to have been to appeal to the courts or the legislature to sanction competitors who used unfair and misleading wording in their plan terms?
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#49I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually I got a letter from my ISP and it was a thick binder with "netiquette". How to behave online. And a letter saying basically "we see everything you're doing, cut it out". They probably had complaints on the abuse address of my home IP, since I was a total moron…
I was a little shit too. At one point I was playing a MUD from a university terminal, and had lag issues. I tracked down the slow node via traceroute, figured out the domain, and sent an angry email dripping with vitriol to admin@ berating their router, their infrastructure, etc. Actually got a reply back admonishing me for wasting resources :-). I wish I could track down the person involved today so I can apologize...
Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
#50I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually I got a letter from my ISP and it was a thick binder with "netiquette". How to behave online. And a letter saying basically "we see everything you're doing, cut it out". They probably had complaints on the abuse address of my home IP, since I was a total moron…
I was totally the same. Got several phone calls and had my ISP service terminated when I was 13-14. Portscanned and war-dialed everything. Went to defcon when I was 16. I got my first job at a local ISP after the owner busted me for running "John the Ripper" password cracker against his system that I had a shell account on. As completely careless and reckless as I was, this kind of interest in hacking was my saving g…
Same, had to repeat 10th grade, dropped out of 11th to get a job in IT and I've been living it up ever since. Not with any FAANG but then again I'm in Europe so we don't have such giants here. I work for the largest telco, partly government owned. (same ISP that sent me that letter;)