61–70 of 240 posts
> Dial-up internet speeds average about 56 kilobytes a second Nope, that would be considered crazy fast back in the day, it was 56 kilo bits per second. That's about 6.8 kilobytes, but realistically and with overhead it was usually around 5KB/s.
TIL AOL still offered dial-up internet. At long last, the 1990s will soon come to an end.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did those CD's actually contain? A browser with some firmware?
lol no. They had a fat desktop client and often Windows networking drivers because even the OS wasn't network ready for consumers yet.
I got 600 hours free with a copy of Chex Quest (DooM reskin for kids) in a box of cereal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cellular internet. Edit: I'm not saying it's a good replacement for dialup, just that I have observed that many cell phone carriers are advertising plans for it now.
Here is "ping 8.8.8.8" showing latency over cellular internet some of the time, and I live in the centre of a city: 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6145 ttl=114 time=363613.635 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6175 ttl=114 time=334289.726 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6176 ttl=114 time=333689.274 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6177 ttl=114 time=332851.621 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6178 ttl=114 tim…
> Dial-up internet speeds average about 56 kilobytes a second Nope, that would be considered crazy fast back in the day, it was 56 kilo bits per second. That's about 6.8 kilobytes, but realistically and with overhead it was usually around 5KB/s.
33.6 kbit/s (a later addition)
31.2 kbit/s (a later addition)
28.8 kbit/s (the theoretical maximum for most people; I remember being jealous of people who actually got it)
26.4 kbit/s (what my internet usually hit in practice)
24.0 kbit/s (I remember seeing this)
21.6 kbit/s (apparently this was very common, though I don't remember seeing it)
19.2 kbit/s
16.8 kbit/s
14.4 kbit/s (quite possible)
(lower bitrates are also documented; this is all multiples of 2.4 kbit/s)
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?
Real miss by the NYT here in not finding and interviewing people who were still using it in 2025!
I have now seen multiple articles about this and none of them talked about how much use it was actually getting today, which I have found disappointing. Not sure why none that I have seen have been any better.
Real miss by the NYT here in not finding and interviewing people who were still using it in 2025!
I worked on a help desk from 2013-2016 for an MSP that served some rural telcos. A couple of the clients still offered dial-up internet, so there were a few hundred people with dial up at that point. They were largely people with very rural homes that they didn't even have DSL. They were largely older people. And they just made a steady profit, the equipment and lines basically just worked and they had a FAR lower ra…
Maybe email and Amazon are enough, though.