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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

#71

Post by paradox460 »

xxpor wrote: post #31
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #7

Hah 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…

At least switching ISPs back then meant essentially signing up for an account and changing phone numbers. Now there's all this physical infra to deal with, yuck :)

In Utah, if you have Utopia, its about as easy as it was with Dial-up. You just go sign up a new provider, change a few settings on your router, and you're done.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#72

Post by wkdneidbwf »

batch12 wrote: post #28

> "I'm not revisiting an issue that you may have experienced in 1998 with Networks," Fourney wrote. "Times are dramatically different in 2023 than they were in 1998. Not sure why anyone would have an interest in revisiting 28K dialup days of 1998." Bleh, what a boring response from the CEO. It's always interesting to look back and where we were to appreciate how far we've come. Also, there's the nostalgia of 'simple…

yeah, really lame response.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#73

Post by tguvot »

Used to work in local branch of first of Israeli ISPs . Entire dial-in modem pool was in one room office on wire cart. Two dozens of US Robotics. When me or any of coworkers couldn't get a line, we used to call office and random modem will be power cycled.

Don't remember if packages were unlimited or not, but phone line definitely wasn't. I still remember how my mother was unhappy with 1200NS phone bill (almost minimal salary at this time frame)

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#75

Post by p1mrx »

As a broke high school student, I downloaded this Windows utility called JAcKED that sniffs the DUN/PPP credentials from a variety of free ISP dialers:

https://www.docdroid.net/1JrYKEd/jacked-readme-2001-pdf

You could install some ISP adware, dial in once, uninstall, and then stay connected 24/7 with no ads or restrictions. That worked for at least a year, until DOCSIS reached our area. 1500/128 kbps was massively better than 26/26 kbps over miles of copper.

Combined with AllAdvantage and a mouse mover bot (custom VB6 named notepad.exe to evade detection), you could "earn" like $8/month via questionable ethics.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#77

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

As of a few years ago, my friend's roommate was receiving nastygrams from the ISP for this same thing.

My friend refuses to purchase a broadband connection for the house, because she says she believes that her roommate would violate copyright on a massive scale. She uses her iPhone for everything and has no desktop/notebook. So she keeps her roommate on a dial-up modem line.

And the ISP does become upset when roommate is online for long periods of time or downloads a lot of data or something. Apparently the roommate is into RPGs and forums of whatever kind.

I've encouraged her to give in and get that broadband. Her wireless voice calls are spotty and sometimes I can't understand her. But she's good with the status quo.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#78

Post by deckard1 »

INTPenis wrote: post #35

I 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…

My dad got a letter from our ISP saying someone was "hacking" a certain site. He asked me about it and I sheepishly denied it.

The site that reported me was the owner of hax0r.com (or .org? Cannot remember) and various other stupid vanity domains (used and leased, purposely mind you, for IRC bots and things like that). I think they were just mad because their shell account was passed around IRC like the most popular whore in town.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#79

Post by dylan604 »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #77

As of a few years ago, my friend's roommate was receiving nastygrams from the ISP for this same thing. My friend refuses to purchase a broadband connection for the house, because she says she believes that her roommate would violate copyright on a massive scale. She uses her iPhone for everything and has no desktop/notebook. So she keeps her roommate on a dial-up modem line. And the ISP does become upset when roommat…

what geographic region are you (or "your friend") located with dial-up access?
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