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What Was ISDN?

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Re: What Was ISDN?

#111

Post by xp84 »

snvzz wrote: post #106

The real shame is that PSTN lines continued to be installed through decades, despite ISDN existence. Thankfully, wrongs have finally been righted with FTTP/FTTH being widespread now. I enjoyed ISDN internet access at 128kbps via high school in the mid 90s, and shitty v90 through early 2000s.

Widespread, I guess in completely new construction maybe. AT&T in particular has proven they care nearly not at all to roll out their fiber product to residential, even when they were still stubbornly doing FTTN out of cheapness.

I’m still sad that Google pulled the plug on investment in Google Fiber. The only thing that could possibly have egged American telcos on enough to build a real network.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#112

Post by _ugfj »

netman21 wrote: post #80

I launched RustNet in 1992 as "the first ISDN ISP in Michigan." We offered a blindingly fast internet speed of 125k! At the time Silicon Graphics had added an ISDN port to its latest workstation, which I had for the engineering design work we did. The launch of our ISP occurred at an industrial expo at Cobo Hall in Detroit. We were not set up yet so I talked to the product manager of the ISDN feature at SGI and he wa…

Oh first ISPs are fun.

I worked for the first commercial ISP in Hungary in 1995. At the time phone lines were still a hot commodity -- it takes a bit of time to fix decades of neglect, after all (Hungary was a Soviet satellite until 1989 and the wait time for a landline was ~ten years in the 80s). So supply side for lines was low and prices were high. On the other hand, the potential income for the ISP was limited because, well, it's 1995, not many people or businesses even know what Internet is good for. So how on earth did they afford the necessary many lines?

Well, see, they didn't. The guys running the place got wind of a CO in an older district in Budapest has excess capacity so they rented a flat next to the CO and drilled the wall. Presto! Plenty phone lines without installation costs.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#113

Post by musha68k »

ISDN absolutely was exhilarating “technology from the future” during the 90s and even into ~2000 era just before general cable/DSL proliferation.

It usually just worked consistently and at unbelievably high data rates vs theoretical “56k” even on 64kbit/s single channel. Meaning basically 2x IRL downloads vs 56k at usually tenable full hop bandwidth of constant 8kb/s.

I kept being mesmerized by “just the basics” of ISDN + TCP/IP; it all was working just so flawlessly. For years on end, and each time I went online. Pure wonder and amazement.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#114

Post by linsomniac »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #108
netman21 wrote: post #80

I launched RustNet in 1992 as "the first ISDN ISP in Michigan." We offered a blindingly fast internet speed of 125k! At the time Silicon Graphics had added an ISDN port to its latest workstation, which I had for the engineering design work we did. The launch of our ISP occurred at an industrial expo at Cobo Hall in Detroit. We were not set up yet so I talked to the product manager of the ISDN feature at SGI and he wa…

Another trick was to ask the ILEC for an alarm circuit between two premises, giving you a dedicated circuit via dry copper pairs between them.

I had one of those between my home and my office. It worked great for about 6 months until it stopped working entirely. No support was available because the only supported signaling was the closing of a relay. The phone company seemed to be searching out likely alarm circuit data use and putting filters on them to force an upgrade to a data circuit. (USWest/QWest)

Re: What Was ISDN?

#115

Post by pixl97 »

kstrauser wrote: post #83
netman21 wrote: post #80

I launched RustNet in 1992 as "the first ISDN ISP in Michigan." We offered a blindingly fast internet speed of 125k! At the time Silicon Graphics had added an ISDN port to its latest workstation, which I had for the engineering design work we did. The launch of our ISP occurred at an industrial expo at Cobo Hall in Detroit. We were not set up yet so I talked to the product manager of the ISDN feature at SGI and he wa…

Ahh, good ol’ pair gain, where the ILEC would basically share one circuit between 2 houses. Saves money from not having to run a second circuit, plus the sound quality isn’t too awful as long as you’re deaf. I also worked at an ISP. Customers would sometimes call to complain about how much we must suck because their shiny new 56k modem wouldn’t train up past 28.8, and it couldn’t possibly be on their end because they…

We're going to need a PTSD trigger warning on this thread if we keep this up.

Did residential dial up support from 95-00, and got to experience all those disasters.

Another fun one is when you serve at the edge of two different phone companies and they didn't have enough cross connect service between the two for all the long running dial up connections. Yea, your modem banks aren't full, but your customers are getting busy signals.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#116

Post by ashurov »

andirk wrote: post #73
ashurov wrote: post #28

Got ISDN as a previous job as parttime helpdesk employee at an ISP. Together with the rise of numberous dail-up providers, including the legendary Superweb. It would allow free internet against a fix rate, not paying per minute, which was something new for the Netherlands. It would only allow one or two hours after it would disconnect you and you had to redial. Due their succes getting dialed in again could take quit…

Very cool! What was your language of choice for this script? I'm guessing perl. I've only done port stuff with C though.

it was shell-scripting (bash). And i'm not sure, but it i think i was mandrake linux distro. It was quite the work to get ISDN working properly, especially to use two lines at a time (one dialing, while the other one was in use).

Re: What Was ISDN?

#117

Post by linsomniac »

geertj wrote: post #109

One really cool thing about ISDN was that it connected almost instantaneously (within a second). In fact I remember the first time I used it, I thought the connection had failed because I could not imagine it connected so fast. This allowed you to have the illusion of being always online by auto dialing just in time. I remember setting up modemd (IIRC) to keep the connection open for at least the minumum charge time…

I was lucky enough to have a grandfathered flat-rate ISDN in my apartment in ~94-97. I had one of those Motorola BitSurfr modems, and would keep it up to my ISP with 128Kbps, but if a phone call came in it would drop one so I had 64K and could talk on the phone. Invariably, these calls were people looking to post adverts in the Thrifty Nickel paper. My number was close to theirs.

I ended up staying in a small apartment for a couple of years rather than moving to a bigger, nicer one, because moving would have caused me to lose my flat rate ISDN and instead have to pay by the minute.

Being done with waiting for two modems to sniff each-others butts like a couple of dogs was liberating!

I moved to a house in 1997 and went back to modems. But I started consulting with an ISP and they offered to let me connect a T1 from my house to their network. I got a contract from the phone company for $205/mo, and got the T1 installed. They charged me $250, and after a few months of me calling them about it they said their tariff wouldn't allow them to sell it for $205, the contract was a mistake.

That was a few days after I got a flier advertising DSL: half the speed but a quarter the price. But a lot of speculation that "DSL will never work". However, it did, and it was great.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#118

Post by jonathanlydall »

devbug wrote: post #97
jonathanlydall wrote: post #40

I had ISDN in South Africa for a while back in the day. Aside from the higher throughput, one of the other great things about it compared to analogue dial-up modems was the almost instant connection speed while old analogue took tens of seconds, maybe even a minute. But the biggest thing that really made it feel “responsive” was its digital nature, meaning that your baseline latency was mere sub-10 milliseconds inste…

Amazing. Do you know if Telkom offered ISDN around ‘95 thru to ‘01? My parents had “two lines” back then so we could always have access to the Internet, even while talking on the phone. I recall, vaguely, using dial up but we may have had an ISDN line. In part, because my Dad wanted to order LaserDiscs from the US while my Mom was chatting away to family.

Honestly wouldn’t know, I matriculated in 2000 and didn’t actually know much about these things while in school.

Seems possible, but a second regular phone line seems just as possible.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#119

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

We networked our nerd house in the early/mid 90s, using an ISDN terminal to get that blazing fast 128kbps. Back then, people weren't constantly streaming video, so most of the time when you were downloading stuff (kernel source, Linux distros, funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu, etc.) you got the whole 128k to yourself.

Most people at the phone company had no idea what ISDN was, so it took a while to find a technician there who could get up provisioned, etc.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#120

Post by toomuchtodo »

linsomniac wrote: post #114
toomuchtodo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another trick was to ask the ILEC for an alarm circuit between two premises, giving you a dedicated circuit via dry copper pairs between them.

I had one of those between my home and my office. It worked great for about 6 months until it stopped working entirely. No support was available because the only supported signaling was the closing of a relay. The phone company seemed to be searching out likely alarm circuit data use and putting filters on them to force an upgrade to a data circuit. (USWest/QWest)

Didn't see the same with SBC/ATT [1] in the Chicago burbs mid 90s fortunately. Even got a tour of the central office by walking up to the door as an early teen and asking to look around. Different times.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T#Rise_of_SBC

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