What Was ISDN? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Was ISDN?

#161

Post by 31337Logic » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 2:40 AM UTC

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…

I see your Winmodem and raise you one Mwave.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#162

Post by maltalex » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 1:13 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #115

kstrauser wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gettin…

That still happens on the internet, just in a different layer - between Autonomous Systems: You’re a content provider serving at the edge of two different providers and they didn’t have enough cross connect between the two for all the required bandwidth. Yea, your connection and servers are underutilized, but customers are getting timeouts.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#163

Post by linsomniac » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 1:43 PM UTC

kjs3 wrote: post #147

linsomniac wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 apartme…

If your house was provisioned with a T1, you already had all the things that routinely screw up a xDSL connection fixed.

Back at that time the primary concern about screwing up DSL was cross-talk: "Once more than a few people in your neighborhood have DSL, the cross-talk between lines will brick everyone." There was a lot of hate, not sure exactly where it came from.

Re: What Was ISDN?

#164

Post by adamretter » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:11 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #139

adamretter wrote: post #92

Back around 1996 I was working for a non-profit rural digital project in Devon, Southwest England, called Project COSMIC. If I recall correctly there were 2 main types of ISDN in the UK at that time (a) on-demand, which was similar to dial-up, and needed an ISDN modem, or (b) leased line ISDN which was always on 24x7 and terminated in a Router. I was lucky enough at COSMIC to have access to a 64 Kbit/s ISDN leased li…

> 64 Kbit/s ISDN leased line That would have been Kilostream which wasn't part of the ISDN system. Kilostream pre-dated ISDN. The reason for its high cost was that you could throw as much data as you wanted to 24hrs a day and it was a point to point dedicated circuit, i.e. you couldn't "dial up" different locations the way you could with ISDN.

@teh_klev That's interesting. I thought I also remembered the DSU being branded with BT ISDN logo, but perhaps I am mistaken, it was a long time ago now!