Oh my GOD, DIAL-UP Speed!!!

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Geek @ Coastguard NZ
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#445292 3-Mar-2011 20:49

jjnz1:
Where as back in 1998, on a 56Kb (a Compuserve connection, anyone remember this ISP?), an AOL web page took maybe 10-20 seconds....

Compuserve only shut down their NZ connection about 3 years ago.... had a client who was still using them, on dialup..... drove me nuts.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Beccara

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#445298 3-Mar-2011 21:08

jjnz1:
CYaBro: While you are moaning about "dialup speed"
When an ADSL connection gets capped to 64kbps or "dialup speed" it is much much slower than that, almost unusable.
Every time I've seen someone go over their data cap and get slowed down you pretty much can't even browse to any pages or send/receive emails.
Dialup was not that bad.

/rant

I am going to come out and plainly state your WRONG. ;)

The browsing experience in terms of viewing content has got slower over time because now web pages like stuff.co.nz are almost 1MB! On a 64Kb throttled connection, the page would take years (-not really maybe a minute or two)

Where as back in 1998, on a 56Kb (a Compuserve connection, anyone remember this ISP?), an AOL web page took maybe 10-20 seconds....

But that AOL page it wasn't 1MB!

*I know AOL didn't exist then, but i cannot remember the company before the merge.

It's all relative, anyone who was on dialup and isnt tech savey could be forgiven for mistaking a 256k or even 512k link as being as slow as the dialup that they remeber when comparing page load times, they dont know the size has ballooned all they know is their slow connection takes the same time to load IE's start page as it did back when they had dialup

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

All comment's I make are my own personal opinion and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the views of current or former employers unless specifically stated

mckenndk

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#445307 3-Mar-2011 21:37

First modem I had was a 33.6Kb built in it was fast.

These were also the days when you got your web browser from your ISP on disk or CD (netscape, IE3, etc)

After starting work I got to have a go with a 56Kb and had to upgrade home as 33.6kb it was too slow, but it would also depend what modem you were able to connect to at the ISP.
I do remember having to set the baud rate etc for when a network game of doom consisted of dialing up your mates pc and hogging the phone line for hours.

I have used slower modems for work purposes as well 14.4kb and I think its 19.2kb.

When traveling around I use to use I4free (slingshot) and Zfree (Telstra Clear) dialup.

The easy days.

Now I can do most things on my phone and of course tethering to the laptop.
I never could of dreamed we would have the technology that we have now apple was just a computer that booted of disk's, the Mac was a computer in a box and Android/Google had not even been thought of.

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kyhwana2

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#445328 3-Mar-2011 22:38

Man, I remember having a 1200baud modem to connect to BBS' in the BoP. A friend then got a 14.4k modem and ZOMG it was blazing fast.

webwat

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#445350 3-Mar-2011 23:45

CYaBro: While you are moaning about "dialup speed"
When an ADSL connection gets capped to 64kbps or "dialup speed" it is much much slower than that, almost unusable.
Every time I've seen someone go over their data cap and get slowed down you pretty much can't even browse to any pages or send/receive emails.
Dialup was not that bad.

/rant

Its much much faster than real dialup which is usually slower than the maximum 56kbps due to whatever adapters, lines, and telecom equipment so you often get closer to 45kbps or 33kbps. Web pages these days has so much graphics and flash/java/embeded content that is will take a couple of minutes to load. Stop using the connection for other stuff, turn BT off, and just use one thing at a time as if it really was dialup — you will find its still pretty snappy for basic pages due to better latency than real dialup. Embedded content will still be pretty slow but the timeouts are mostly caused by congestion from your other downloads. You normally cant speedup by trying to download several pages at once.

Time to find a new industry!

jjnz1

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#445357 4-Mar-2011 00:10

xpd:
jjnz1:
Where as back in 1998, on a 56Kb (a Compuserve connection, anyone remember this ISP?), an AOL web page took maybe 10-20 seconds....

Compuserve only shut down their NZ connection about 3 years ago.... had a client who was still using them, on dialup..... drove me nuts.

Really? That's interesting. All I remember is that their prices were through the roof!

rygrass

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#445372 4-Mar-2011 07:34

Well never would of thought it would go backwards here i went from using Dail up to pretty much MAX ADSL.

Now at work i have used some 9.6 kbs modem... and man what a treat

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Behodar

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#445396 4-Mar-2011 09:09

This brings back a few memories! I remember dialling up to a BBS using a 4800 modem. I also remember the huge speed increase we got by upgrading to 14.4 :)

My first real ISP, Voyager, supplied a setup disk that dialled up and then downloaded Netscape. It took about half an hour, from memory. It was $10 per hour so we looked around for more options and found Wave with 30 hours for $30. No contest really! Wave is now owned by Vodafone, I believe.

SepticSceptic

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#445460 4-Mar-2011 11:22

jjnz1:
CYaBro: While you are moaning about "dialup speed"
When an ADSL connection gets capped to 64kbps or "dialup speed" it is much much slower than that, almost unusable.
Every time I've seen someone go over their data cap and get slowed down you pretty much can't even browse to any pages or send/receive emails.
Dialup was not that bad.

/rant

I am going to come out and plainly state your WRONG. ;)

The browsing experience in terms of viewing content has got slower over time because now web pages like stuff.co.nz are almost 1MB! On a 64Kb throttled connection, the page would take years (-not really maybe a minute or two)

+1.

Damn right - I'm on dialup ( no spare ADSL connections in cabinet), and quite a few popular webpages take an age to load. However, TradeMe is small and compact, even with the thumbnails, NZ Herald is OK.

One tends to watch the Task Manager network tab, and the moment there is a drop in data transfer, you load up the next page in the background, even before you have finished digesting the first page. It's do-able, but painful. Handy to have pre-stored MM content playing as you wait for the pages to load.

UncleArk

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#445486 4-Mar-2011 13:02

Interesting thread...

I had an acoustic coupler in 1984 and then in 1985 I got a 300buad modem - you had to manually dial the number with a phone handset and then when you heard the carrier signal push a button to engage the modem...

It cost $1,700 for that modem!

in 1987 I got my first 1200buad modem which was an "Avatex 1200E" Hayes clone - bought locally in Christchurch from "Darkstar Imports" - (Darren someone or other from memory - I think he still floats around the ChCh IT scene...)

in 1990 I got my first 2400 and in 1992 the first 9600....

First 56K modem in 1997...

256K cable connection in 2002 with Telstra

ADSL in 2003

ADSL2 in 2010

2011 - hopefully VDSL!

Man - I've been "online" for nearly 27 years!

I have many fond memories of the local Christchurch BBS scene in the mid 80's to early 90's... Even ran one for a couple of years...

snnet

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#445864 5-Mar-2011 21:38

waw. you are all really really old. *snicker*

tdgeek

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#445869 5-Mar-2011 22:15

In my opinion..............

Dialup now, is exactly the same as it has always been. No different. At all. Back in them ol' days how big was a homepage? It was small. DU loaded it within a few seconds at about 5.5KB /sec I recall the Xtra homepage in those days being about 50KB. Later it was 85KB. So it took a few more seconds to load as it more cool stuff on it.

These days, many homepages are chock full of cool stuff. Much text, cool pics, ads flashing. Many are in the 1Mbyte region of size. At 5.5KB/sec DU that will take a while. Bank logins go thru security measures, so that will take a while.

The purpose of being speed reduced to DU is to cease the plan you paid for as you used it up, but not to cutoff the internet. You can then choose the work with the DU speed until the plan resumes or change to a more suitable plan. Or you can monitor the usage so you are aware of exceeding, and therefore decide how to mange that. By changing to a more suitable plan, or easing up on usage, by holding of those larger downloads till later. That way you can retain the speed for email. surfing, banking, all of which will not consume much usage.

The plans Telecom has, now have an option to have TOC (Throttle On Cap where you have price certainty) or full speed with an overage charge. This has just been released.

Cheers all

lokhor

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#446016 6-Mar-2011 15:47

The idea of throttling to 64kbps is pretty horrible. Even in countries like Australia where they still have caps they often only throttle to 128kbps or 256kbps.

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

Talkiet

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#446028 6-Mar-2011 16:09

lokhor: The idea of throttling to 64kbps is pretty horrible. Even in countries like Australia where they still have caps they often only throttle to 128kbps or 256kbps.

The majority of plans, and all new plans (I think) include an option to either TOC or go to overage charging at quite a reasonable rate. I think the TOC arguments are really an artifact that no-one really has to deal with anymore unless they want to.

As for 128 or 256k options - just calculate how much traffic someone could get with (say) 256k and you'll see why it's not sustainable.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

lokhor

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#446043 6-Mar-2011 17:05

Is there a reason why Aussie ISPs can all sustain throttled speeds greater than 64kbps yet NZ ISPs can't?

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

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