AOL to discontinue dial-up internet • Hacker News Board

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#151

Post by RiverCrochet » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 11:00 PM UTC

jonbiggums22 wrote: post #71

MarkusWandel wrote: post #56

Dialup became useless long ago because of web bloat. My mom had a rural dialup connection that typically managed about 30kbps. 15+ years ago this was enough to load Facebook, Gmail (even without its fallback basic html mode which is gone now anyway) and so on. You just had to be patient the first time while all the graphic assets got cached. Some years later she was on a cell network connection with 128kbps fallback…

Had a similar experience. I grew up in a rural area and broadband penetration was late. Later when I bought a house I was lied to by comcast about availability and ended up dialup again. (My fault for believing them tbh) Most of the tricks I used to make the most out of a dialup connection (disable images, disable flash player, load multiple pages so they could be browsed offline) didn't make a difference anymore. In…

A firm I used to do network work for had Hughesnet as failover Internet for a couple locations. I always knew they were on it by the 500ms+ pings. Better than nothing though for sure. And I'd also believe that's typical of any non-Starlink Internet around the end of the 2010s.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#152

Post by themadturk » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 11:02 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #90

As much crap as AOL used to get, there's not much difference between their chat in 1996 and Teams and Slack now. And it managed to do it with 8 Mb of RAM over a 14.4k modem. Of course it didn't have video, but the group chat itself was basically the same. In some ways, tech progress has been pretty disappointing.

At a law office I worked in during the 90s, several of the secretaries and paralegals had AOL Instant Messenger installed on their machines for IM inside the office (and to/from people outside the office too, I'm sure). I dunno if it violated any licensing agreements, but it worked well and didn't cost the firm a penny.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#153

Post by themadturk » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 11:06 PM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #2

I’ve always wondered about the remaining users of the dial-up service. Who are they and what is the use case for using dial-up? Does anyone know?

Elderly people are often reluctant to change what they have grown used to. Not only did my mom continue to use dialup until she went into memory care in 2019, when her Windows XP machine died a couple of years earlier, she wanted me to make Windows 10 on her new machine look and act in every way like XP. (I was not successful at this.)

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#154

Post by sys_64738 » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 11:42 PM UTC

lousken wrote: post #73

Downloading 200MB Windows 98 update was the adrenaline back then.

I remember downloading IE4 over a phone line at the inlaws. It took hours for a few MB. It was worse if I recall as I already had broadband via Road Runner back then (1998).

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#155

Post by MarkusWandel » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 12:24 AM UTC

RiverCrochet wrote: post #151

jonbiggums22 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a similar experience. I grew up in a rural area and broadband penetration was late. Later when I bought a house I was lied to by comcast about availability and ended up dialup again. (My fault for believing them tbh) Most of the tricks I used to make the most out of a dialup connection (disable images, disable flash player, load multiple pages so they could be browsed offline) didn't make a difference anymore. In…

A firm I used to do network work for had Hughesnet as failover Internet for a couple locations. I always knew they were on it by the 500ms+ pings. Better than nothing though for sure. And I'd also believe that's typical of any non-Starlink Internet around the end of the 2010s.

Heh. I know someone who uses VoIP via geostationary satellite internet connection. He tried Starlink as an upgrade, however, the 100W continuous power draw was a dealbreaker with his off-grid solar setup. This is off-grid enough not to have cell coverage.

Anyway talking with him on the phone you pretty much have to use a "over" / "over and out" kind of protocol because of the long latency.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#156

Post by jlarocco » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 12:54 AM UTC

Hobadee wrote: post #119

jlarocco wrote: post #90

As much crap as AOL used to get, there's not much difference between their chat in 1996 and Teams and Slack now. And it managed to do it with 8 Mb of RAM over a 14.4k modem. Of course it didn't have video, but the group chat itself was basically the same. In some ways, tech progress has been pretty disappointing.

Except that the AIM protocol was reverse-enginnereed and you could then use a single client (GAIM/Pidgeon, Trillian) to talk to all your friends. The protocols nowadays are so locked down that there has yet to be a decent 3rd party implementation.

The AOL chat rooms were different than AIM.

From the chat room you could open instant messages to specific people, and that one-on-one chat eventually became AIM.

For one-on-one messaging, the 3rd party clients were often better, but I don't remember any 3rd party clients for the chat rooms. I only used them from the AOL application itself.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#157

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 1:15 AM UTC

Still remember when AOL cut our internet after I got spicy at 9 years old because I was mad at my cousin. Mom was very unhappy. We got internet back, but I wasnt allowed on for months. Lots of memories there.

I remember getting into Star Craft and my sister logged in from Puerto Rico which would disconnect me in Florida almost all the time. I really hated when my sister did this, so I borrowed my friends AOL login info, he was online way less than me.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#158

Post by msgodel » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 1:24 AM UTC

st_goliath wrote: post #37

So, eternal September is now officially coming to an end?

It's funny, many people complain that the web got way worse after smartphones became common. It's the second eternal September.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#159

Post by userbinator » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #56

Dialup became useless long ago because of web bloat. My mom had a rural dialup connection that typically managed about 30kbps. 15+ years ago this was enough to load Facebook, Gmail (even without its fallback basic html mode which is gone now anyway) and so on. You just had to be patient the first time while all the graphic assets got cached. Some years later she was on a cell network connection with 128kbps fallback…

The web bloat is definitely real. There are so many things which could be done with a simple HTML form, and often were, that got replaced with huge bloated JS-obligatory SPAs because... "modern".

Even IM clients were possible without JS, just plain HTML forms and pure applied skill, which I'll leave as exercise for the reader to figure out. I remember using a few HTML-IRC gateways which worked that way.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#160

Post by rossant » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

neuralRiot wrote: post #149

pixelpoet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember getting 5.2 KB/s downloading the Worms 2 demo from Tucows and could practically feel the wind in my hair screaming down the information superhighway...

I remember spending ONE WEEK downloading windows 98. Younger generations will never know the fun of click-and-wait and the thrill of jpgs slowly loading.

I remember spending 4 hours downloading the GTA 2 demo on PC. My parents weren't happy with the phone bill later that month. But the wait was so worth it.