Oh my GOD, DIAL-UP Speed!!!

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Talkiet

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#78340 3-Mar-2011 15:44

Sorry for the topic line...

OK guys (and gals). Hands up who knows what Dial-up speed is? Hands up who has actually used a real dialup connection? Hands up who actually knows what a 300baud or 1200/75 connection feels like... OK, Both of you, you're excused from this discussion.

"Dialup speed" is one of the most misunderstood terms bandied about on Geekzone, and it's frustrating when people emotively or deliberately use the term inaccurately.

Here are some acceptable descriptions of "dialup speed"...

- You're actually using a real dialup modem, you will probably be getting anything between 24kbps and 53kbps as a connection speed.
- Your ADSL line has been capped to 64kbps. Although this is technically greater than dialup, it's close, and various factors conspire to make policing at this line speed awkward so performance is often "dialup speed"
- You are genuinely experiencing throughput of less than about 64kbps

Here are some unacceptable descriptions of "dialup speed"... Note these are made up but based on stuff I have continuously seen here and in other forums.

- OMG, I can't get over a MB/sec, I only get 60KB/sec - that's DIALUP SPEED.
- I can barely stream Hidef Youtube, it's like DIALUP SPEED
- I can't max out my ADSL line, why are we stuck with this DIALUP SPEED?
- Why can't I get over 100K/sec on Bittorrent, it's worse than DIALUP SPEED.

Those last four comments are utter BS, but regularly show up here in various guises.

So why is it so hard to get this right... As I see it, there's a few possible reasons...

1) The person has never used dialup, and simply doesn't know what dialup means, and just use it as a term for 'slower than I expect'
2) The person knows that dialup is 56kbps (kilobit/sec) nominally, but doesn't understand that their application showing them 50KBps (Kilobytes/sec) is actually showing 7-8 times faster than the max theoretical dialup speed
3) The people know what dialup is, and have a good handle on the units in play, but simply don't care, and want to make a point by lying.

See the examples chart on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_units

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.

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#445200 3-Mar-2011 15:54

I miss dialup.... Bring back BBS's!!!

XPD / Gavin

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CYaBro

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#445202 3-Mar-2011 15:56

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

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Regs

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#445207 3-Mar-2011 16:10

OMG i cant get more than 4k/s on each of my 1,000 torrents i'm downloading. Thats DIALUP SPEED!!!!! @$%@$

P.S. i was one of the two that used to own a 300 baud modem! I even used an acoustic coupler once. Watching individual characters appearing slowly on a vt100 terminal screen is an experience, for sure.

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graemeh

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#445208 3-Mar-2011 16:11

xpd: I miss dialup.... Bring back BBS's!!!

Send me your address and I'll post you a modem that goes up to 14.4k and has a proprietary 19k feature :)

You can set up your own BBS with it!

kiwitrc

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#445210 3-Mar-2011 16:16

Used to use 75 baud fax over HF Radio running on teleprinters. At least I think it was as its that long ago.

dolsen

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#445213 3-Mar-2011 16:19

Regs: OMG i cant get more than 4k/s on each of my 1,000 torrents i'm downloading. Thats DIALUP SPEED!!!!! @$%@$

P.S. i was one of the two that used to own a 300 baud modem! I even used an acoustic coupler once. Watching individual characters appearing slowly on a vt100 terminal screen is an experience, for sure.

I must be the other one. No AT commands there, you dialled, waited for the other end to answer and flicked a switch to begin communication.

Somewhat painfull watching the characters appear. I did pick up a 1200/75 modem, but, I never managed to get it to work so was stuck at 300 baud for a while.

Actually, I still have it somewhere. Perhaps I should break it out and see if it still works....

Maybe not.

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#445215 3-Mar-2011 16:32

graemeh:
xpd: I miss dialup.... Bring back BBS's!!!

Send me your address and I'll post you a modem that goes up to 14.4k and has a proprietary 19k feature :)

You can set up your own BBS with it!

No thanks, had a USR Courier 14.4 to start my BBS with... then a 33.6k Dynalink. They were the days (sigh).

XPD / Gavin

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nate

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#445221 3-Mar-2011 17:07

xpd: No thanks, had a USR Courier 14.4 to start my BBS with... then a 33.6k Dynalink. They were the days (sigh).

Did you also have to fight off dinosaurs while administering your BBS?

/me told you I'd have revenge for those KFC jokes.

freitasm

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#445223 3-Mar-2011 17:20

When I first started working we had 1,000 poll select terminal connected to our two Burroughs mainframes. A few of those were linked over 300 bauds modems over satellite or X.25 links.

When I first came to New Zealand in 1995 I needed to connect back home to collect messages - using a 1,200 baud modem over international lines.

I ran a BBS with four lines, all powered with four US Robotics 56K modems on a Pentium 100MHz boz with 16MB RAM...

The first ISP I joined had a 64 Kbps line to the Internet, shared by 500 users in town. Today I have 100 Mbps line to home...

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graemeh

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#445225 3-Mar-2011 17:25

xpd:
graemeh:
xpd: I miss dialup.... Bring back BBS's!!!

Send me your address and I'll post you a modem that goes up to 14.4k and has a proprietary 19k feature :)

You can set up your own BBS with it!

No thanks, had a USR Courier 14.4 to start my BBS with... then a 33.6k Dynalink. They were the days (sigh).

Are you sure. This modem could kick the bum (I can't use the "a" word) of any USR modem.

I can't remember what it cost new but I'm sure looking back it was insane.

xpd

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#445245 3-Mar-2011 18:12

nate:
xpd: No thanks, had a USR Courier 14.4 to start my BBS with... then a 33.6k Dynalink. They were the days (sigh).

Did you also have to fight off dinosaurs while administering your BBS?

/me told you I'd have revenge for those KFC jokes.

Nah, used to throw the dinosaurs KFC

XPD / Gavin

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xpd

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#445247 3-Mar-2011 18:16

graemeh:
xpd:
graemeh:
xpd: I miss dialup.... Bring back BBS's!!!

Send me your address and I'll post you a modem that goes up to 14.4k and has a proprietary 19k feature :)

You can set up your own BBS with it!

No thanks, had a USR Courier 14.4 to start my BBS with... then a 33.6k Dynalink. They were the days (sigh).

Are you sure. This modem could kick the bum (I can't use the "a" word) of any USR modem.

I can't remember what it cost new but I'm sure looking back it was insane.

Well my USR 14.4 cost me $300 second hand.... cant remember exactly when that was, maybe '93.
Now cant give them away...

XPD / Gavin

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michaelt

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#445279 3-Mar-2011 20:13

Circa: 2025

Talkiet: Sorry for the topic line...

OK guys (and gals). Hands up who knows what ADSL speed is? Hands up who has actually used a real ADSL connection? Hands up who actually knows what a 1Mbit or 8000/256 connection feels like... OK, Both of you, you're excused from this discussion.

"DSL speed" is one of the most misunderstood terms bandied about on Geekzone, and it's frustrating when people emotively or deliberately use the term inaccurately.

Here are some acceptable descriptions of "DSL speed"...

- You're actually using a real ADSL modem, you will probably be getting anything between 256kbps and 21Mps as a connection speed.
- Your quantum entanglement line has been capped to 30Mbps. Although this is technically greater than ADSL, it's close, and various factors conspire to make policing at this line speed awkward so performance is often "DSL speed"
- You are genuinely experiencing throughput of less than about 30Mbps

Here are some unacceptable descriptions of "DSL speed"... Note these are made up but based on stuff I have continuously seen here and in other forums.

- OMG, I can't get over 10 GB/sec, I only get 500MB/sec - that's DSL SPEED.
- I can barely stream Ultradef Holotube, it's like ADSL SPEED
- I can't max out my quantum entanglement line, why are we stuck with this DSL SPEED?
- Why can't I get over 10G/sec on Bittorrent, it's worse than DSL SPEED.

Those last four comments are utter BS, but regularly show up here in various guises.

So why is it so hard to get this right... As I see it, there's a few possible reasons...

1) The person has never used ADSL, and simply doesn't know what ADSL means, and just use it as a term for 'slower than I expect'
2) The person knows that ADSL is 24Mbps (kilobit/sec) nominally, but doesn't understand that their application showing them 20MBps (Megabytes/sec) is actually showing 7-8 times faster than the max theoretical ADSL speed
3) The people know what ADSL is, and have a good handle on the units in play, but simply don't care, and want to make a point by lying.

See the examples chart on : 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf

Cheers - N

EDIT: For the record, the slowest modem I've used for any length of time was a 33.6Kbps external US Robotics (still have it actually) . I had an old laptop (Apple Powerbook 150) with a 9600baud modem, but never used the modem (got given the laptop for free years after it was obsolete).

jjnz1

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#445284 3-Mar-2011 20:22

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.

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#445286 3-Mar-2011 20:33

I remember when I got my first modem that was a true automatic 1200 baud one. Most friends of mine had either 300 or the infamous Philips 1203's that were 1200/75 or 72/1200.

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