I've traveled back in time!

[crlang13]

My mom found out how to download movies and killed our data allowance. We're back to dial up speeds and it feels like I traveled back in time. At the moment, I'm waiting to download a 6.3 mb pdf for school. It's taken about 10 minutes to get halfway, 10 more to go...

How did anyone ever deal with internet this slow?

[chriswyatt]

My internet is terrible, sometimes I have to refresh about 5 times because web pages give up halfway through. Other times it just gives up completely.

It can't be that much worse than mine.

[JDShu]

You gotta love the old 56k dialup tone. So nostalgic.

[mcduck]

My mom found out how to download movies and killed our data allowance. We're back to dial up speeds and it feels like I traveled back in time. At the moment, I'm waiting to download a 6.3 mb pdf for school. It's taken about 10 minutes to get halfway, 10 more to go...

How did anyone ever deal with internet this slow?

We had more text and less images back then. And no movies to download.. (and at least here in Finland cheaper phone calls during nights so we could just leave computers to download stuff overnight).

Happy to have my 5Mbps unlimited cable these days. Although they offered to upgrade it to 20Mbps for the same price or 100Mbps for ten more euros per month. Now that you made me remember the old modem days I think the 20Mbps offer should be enough for me... :D

[Phrea]

What...?!
Sorry, but where do you live, and what ISP...?
I cant believe ISP's still do that... :o

Edit: I was on dialup once, but that's been ages and ages...

[Swagman]

Haha.

So you never experienced Napster.. 99% complete and then....Bam bye bye

[RJARRRPCGP]

My mom found out how to download movies and killed our data allowance. We're back to dial up speeds and it feels like I traveled back in time. At the moment, I'm waiting to download a 6.3 mb pdf for school. It's taken about 10 minutes to get halfway, 10 more to go...

How did anyone ever deal with internet this slow?

Sounds like you're on Hughes Net! (USA) (satellite) (Sounds like the dreaded FAP ("fair use policy", (HughesNet) which IIRC, cripples your speeds if you download more than a certain amount, which is probably an insanely small amount!) No other ISP is known to do that.

I would NEVER touch HughesNet! I HATE HughesNet! They are ISP Nazis!

Most ISPs probably would simply would bring you a higher bill in your mail.

But, I see that you're in Australia. I have heard bad things about internet in Australia. A good chance that you're really screwed. :(

Australia is at least about 5 1/2 years behind! :(

[DuronForever]

This sort of thing is still endemic in certain countries, and Australia is notorious for it. Partially that's explainable (It is, after all, at the end of some expensive overseas pipes, its main off-continent connections will all be to english-language places which are not geographically close, etc), due to relatively high bandwidth charges at the carrier level.

Partly it's just sheer bloody-mindedness from the ISPs.

Strangely, the Netherlands has one of the highest worldwide penetration rates for broadband, and effectively no data limits on anything non-mobile, whereas our neighbours Belgium are still commonly affected by a 30 gig or so per month limit, with 100 G (200 during nights) available at a premium price. Slowly, though, they're getting to have the occasional limit-free ISP even there.

On the mobile front, I pay 15 euros a month (on top of the cell subscription) for a UMTS subscription limited to 1 Mbit, which goes to 64 or 128 kbits after 250 gigs or so. On the landline front, I pay a whopping 55 euros for an up-to-20/1 ADSL that trains at 17/1 with no effective limits (people have reported traffic stats in the multi-teras per month for most of the ISPs in .nl, with rarely so much as a "please try to curb that a bit" letter). My employer offers the same service for 25 euros, but, well, I don't like our back end as much.

[majabl]

Funny you should mention this, but earlier this week I was working in a comms black hole and the only link between my laptop and the outside world was an analogue phone line. Out came the dial-up cable for the first time since a similar situation in 2007!

I was actually surprised by how fast the 50.2kbps connection I achieved was, given my very low expectation!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Out came the dial-up cable for the first time since a similar situation in 2007!

I was actually surprised by how fast the 50.2kbps connection I achieved was, given my very low expectation!

Wow, that reminds me of my past, 2007 was the same year that I got broadband for the first time! May, 2007 was when I unplugged the dial-up cable! for good! ;)

I had POTS from November, 2002 to May, 2007. And when mine was working good, my dial-up did seem fast, too. I usually got at least 40 kbps and sometimes 53 kbps.

[fromthehill]

On the mobile front, I pay 15 euros a month (on top of the cell subscription) for a UMTS subscription limited to 1 Mbit, which goes to 64 or 128 kbits after 250 gigs or so.
250 GB on a UMTS subscription :o

what ISP and subscription?

kpn/hetnet 8Mbit up/1Mbit down
can get a "unlimited" HSDPA(doubt it will be that fast) for 30euros a month from some shady company that has a deal with my school

[crlang13]

What...?!
Sorry, but where do you live, and what ISP...?
I cant believe ISP's still do that... :o

Edit: I was on dialup once, but that's been ages and ages...

Yeah, I'm in Australia and it's fairly common down here to cap the usage. As someone else said, we're about 5 years behind the times... I'm not sure what our data allowance is, but for what we're paying we don't get that much before they slow us down.

It's similar with the mobile phone data allowance too; it's very little compared to other countries :(

[_h_]

How did anyone ever deal with internet this slow?

Dial-up was considered fast back then, since most websites were text-only with little graphic, and not filled with heavy duty graphics like websites today.

[lisati]

Yup, got the data caps here over the ditch in NZ too. Haven't gone over mine often lately, except one or two times when I've felt sorry for the neighbour and let him share our connection. The last time we went over the cap and got slowed down, there was some discussion with Mrs Lisati, after which I removed the neighbour's access, much to his disgust. Much muttering later he bought himself a prepaid USB modem.

Not having regularly used dial-up for a couple of years now, I find it mildly amusing when there's an item on TV about internet, and they use the dial-up connection tones as part of their sound effects.

[MichealH]

It got to the point here when the internet goes out we cannot actually find something to do because it's so fast we pay for 10MB/s but we actually get 2MB/s Which is not bad...

I remember Dial up and I'm 13! If I remember we started out on Dial up the like Slow broadband Now 10MB/s O.o

[Psumi]

What...?!
Sorry, but where do you live, and what ISP...?
I cant believe ISP's still do that... :o

Edit: I was on dialup once, but that's been ages and ages...

JUNO and Netzero still are around.

Also, The University of Wisconsin (here.) provides free access to dial-up pools for their students if I recall.

[RabbitWho]

Haha.

So you never experienced Napster.. 99% complete and then....Bam bye bye

Fortunately everyone who did that to me IS NOW DEAD.

[lisati]

It got to the point here when the internet goes out we cannot actually find something to do because it's so fast we pay for 10MB/s but we actually get 2MB/s Which is not bad...

I remember Dial up and I'm 13! If I remember we started out on Dial up the like Slow broadband Now 10MB/s O.o
Sometimes I get nostalgic for punched cards. Then I get thinking about what happens if the deck of cards gets out of order or a card gets jammed in the reader and I'm again thankful for what I've got.

[Psumi]

It got to the point here when the internet goes out we cannot actually find something to do because it's so fast we pay for 10MB/s but we actually get 2MB/s Which is not bad...

I remember Dial up and I'm 13! If I remember we started out on Dial up the like Slow broadband Now 10MB/s O.o

Your upload speed is how fast your internet actually goes. I have 1MBps up, so this means I download files from servers like ubuntu repos at a max of about 1.2 MBps. However, it's usually around the 600 KBps range.

I pay 30 USD/mo for 5 MBps (after the 2 year promotion, it'll go up to 50 USD.) After I pay that 50 USD bill, I plan to switch to 1 MBps and have a flat rate of 20 USD/mo.

[XubuRoxMySox]

Sounds like you're on Hughes Net! (USA) (satellite) (Sounds like the dreaded FAP ("fair use policy", (HughesNet) which IIRC, cripples your speeds if you download more than a certain amount, which is probably an insanely small amount!) No other ISP is known to do that.

WildBlue Satellite internet does the same thing. While HughesNet will slow you down for 24 hours if you exceed a daily limit, WildBlue averages your use over a 30-day period - and slows you down until the thirty-day average falls below 80% of the limit! Which means you could be paying up to $80 USD per month for dialup speed, for as much as 30 days or more!

At least on HughesNet if you get "FAPped," it's only for a single day. When we WB customers get "FAPped," we're slowed way down (last time to about 1/6th of dialup speed) for a month or more.

-Robin

[Post Monkeh]

just make sure you don't meet your mum and dad.
and avoid that biff tannen character - he's bad news.

[koenn]

... whereas our neighbours Belgium are still commonly affected by a 30 gig or so per month limit, ....
tell me about it.
I exceeded my (ISP's) download limit last month (first time ever) and got put on 'slow' until the end of the month, which was for about a week.

I found I could actually live with that, my internet usages is very nineties - i read stuff.

So the slow internet turned out OK for websites such as this forum etc. Downloads that used to take seconds, suddenly take minutes - but that's something you can adjust to. The larger downloads (iso's, net installs, some Windows freeware/shareware programs that need updating; ...) is where it hurts.

[sudoer541]

I want to add Canada to the "bad ISP list"
Canadian ISPs such as: Rogers cable internet and Bell ADSL internet dominate the Canadian internet industry. Which means capped service (very strict!) Slow speeds compared to other countries and of course money-money-money-money-money! Yes its very expensive for crappy service compared to the rest of the world.

I recently heard the federal Govt is allowing other telecommunication companies to come to Canada from different parts of the world and compete with the big ISPs, cell phone providers and more.