Experiencing the internet with a modem

[slag]

I wish there was a demo or youtube video I could watch that would show my kids what living with a modem and dial up internet was like. They have never experienced not being connected 24x7 and being able to just go to the laptop/desktop and log in and be online is all they have ever known. I'd like to show them what it was like to have to turn on the pc, make sure no one was using the phone in the house, then click on the dial up icon, try to connect to the modem bank, watch it negotiate the handshake, and then see what being online with a 28.8 to 56k modem was actually like with page load times, image load times, etc.

I think their minds would be blown.

 

[Fritzo]

If you have a fancy enough router, you can limit the bandwidth to 40K/28K and go to town.

To be fair though, most sites back then were optimized for 56K, meaning they were text heavy and video/graphics light. Now sites are all graphics and video.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah. Average size of a webpage has gone up a lot over the years.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/

Looks like to "handicap" your broadband so it takes a roughly equivalent time to download a page, you'd have to throttle it to about 512Kbps.

You'd probably want to disable all but one core of your CPU and downclock it to ~2GHz as well. (To simulate loading a web page on a 66MHz Pentium.)

 

[dave_the_nerd]

http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/06/15/loading-todays-sites-over-dialup/

iirc, ping time also suffered - 100ms plus was a given.

 

[Imp]

At 8pm every day, just turn off the router.

That was my internet experience back in the mid-90s. Piece of shit ISP obviously was overcapacity and we could almost never dial-in during peak hours.

 

[lupi]

It's easy, take them to grandma's where there is no wireless, let them take out the tablets and tell them to open the browser, it's a close 2nd in experience!

 

[Imp]

It's easy, take them to grandma's where there is no wireless, let them take out the tablets and tell them to open the browser, it's a close 2nd in experience!

To make it more authentic, you'd need to run the batteries on the tablets down, force them to find an outlet, and tape a brick or two to them.

 

[John Connor]

There are free dial-up numbers. You get I think an hour a month. I had to use one to transfer drivers to a very old first predecessor netbook made by HP. It was so old it had no USB or an optical drive, nothing. It used a serial mouse. It did have a PCMCIA slot for the modem/network card and I used my FTP to transfer the drivers that way. Luckily Win 98se saw the modem without a driver. And I actually used my Comcast voice modem for the dial-up! LOL

 

[Mayne]

I was one of the first 2000 customers to use a cable modem in Canada ..actually north america. the novelty still hasn't worn off.

 

[ImpulsE69]

heh, recently my in laws bought a lap top for the MIL. After a few weeks they asked me to come over because the internet was slow. I had told them for years that there internet was slow and they needed to call the provider and have them look at it but it was just one computer that he used to browse and play the occasional baitclick games.

Turns out...The new laptop was Windows 10 and all it's awesome stuff it decides to do in the background was using all their bandwidth. I thought this was odd so I had them show me their bill. They were still on 128k DSL. 128K DSL. I had them call and see if they could get it upgraded. The next week they were getting 50mbit for less than they'd been paying for the DSL for the last 8 years.

 

[RockinZ28]

Easy, just get a LTE modem with Sprint.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh man I remember dialup. I badly wanted to get ADSL when it came out. "one megabit! That's so fast!" Though I was more excited about the "always on" aspect more than anything. I was always fighting with my parents to get some internet time because they were always on the phone, or waiting for a phone call. Ended up getting ADSL for Christmas one year and was super excited. Fast forward to several years ago and when fibre came out I could not wait to sign up!

I remember using Kazaa/Morpheus over dialup. I had it setup to auto dial for a few hours overnight to resume downloads. Fun times. Also, remember how you only had so many hours per month? So you had to be concious of how long you stay connected for. Connect, get what you need, download what you want to keep, and then disconnect. I used to have some CD-RWs that I'd use as "huge" floppies, so I can store stuff like .net framework, directX and stuff like that, so I don't have to redownload it every time I need it. That was win98 days, so you had to format and reinstall often if you were a power user.

As for simulating dialup, it would be kinda an interesting project to setup a dialup server. I wonder what is involved in that, I presume there must be some packages to do it with Linux. You have a PC with 1 or more modems that listen for calls, then process when a (data) call comes in.

Easiest way would probably be to look into one of the free services, but keep in mind there will be long distance calls. If you are on ADSL also check, sometimes they actually offer it free as a backup.

You can throttle speed in Pfsense and possibly other firewalls, but it won't give the "true" experience of dialing in and listening to that glorious sound.

 

[lxskllr]

Easy, just get a LTE modem with Sprint.

and write a script that kills downloads at a variable rate between 50% and 99%, then deletes the partially downloaded file :^D

 

[Gryz]

I don't understand this.

The time of the modem was somewhere between 1995 and 2000. Only 5 years. Before that, nobody had Internet access. (Except at work, and a few, just a few people might have had dialin access at home. I think commercial ISPs started in 1989 to sell connectivity to corporations. And in 1993 or so, the first ISPs started to sell connectivity to individuals). After 2000 everyone switched to cable and DSL. So we're really talking about a 5 year period here.

The real thing that should blow kids away is when they realize how hard it was to get information *before* the Internet. Before 1995. Or before 1993 if you were an early-adapter.

You wanted to know something about something you learned in class ? Go to the library. It was the only place where you could find such information. Oh, and the library was only open between 9:00 and 17:00. And if you lived in a small village, there might not have been a library.

You saw something on TV ? Wanna look at it again ? You heard about a movie or series, and wanna watch it ? No way. Wait until it get re-broadcasted. Most stuff never gets a rerun. What you saw on TV was then and there. And when it was over, it was gone. Forever. (Later you could rent a video. But most videorentals would have a limited number of films, only the most popular ones).

Heard a song you like ? Go to the record-store to buy a record. Maybe it was an older record, or something out of the top-100 ? Tough luck, the record might have been sold out, and not reprinted. CDs were not much different.

Want to take money out of your bank-account ? You gotta go to the bank. No ATMs. No online banking. Oh, and in my country, banks would be open only between 10:00 and 16:00. I remember when I got my first real job, I couldn't get my money, because I had to work until 17:30 every day.

Wanna talk to someone in another country ? Phone-calls were just too expensive, most parents wouldn't allow it (multiple dollars per minute for calls across an ocean). The only practical option: send a letter. And letters would take a week or more to arrive.

And these are just the obvious examples. There are so many things that have completely changed since the arrival of the Internet. Most people (young or old) aren't even aware of it anymore.

Who cares about slow 56k access ?
The real shocker is the different between Internet and no Internet.

 

[lxskllr]

The real shocker is the different between Internet and no Internet.

You forgot "online" ordering. Mail in for a catalog, pick what you want, get your pen to fill out the order form, mail it to the company. Then you get your stuff in a short 6-8 weeks. Hope everything fits. Otherwise you box it up, send it back and get it again in another 6-8 weeks :^D

 

[Imp]

I was one of the first 2000 customers to use a cable modem in Canada ..actually north america. the novelty still hasn't worn off.

We went from dial-up to DSL... and had the wireless router right beside the computer so I got nuked by Wifi for years.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Before the Internet I remember going through the Sears catalog and circling all the stuff I wanted for Christmas. And yep, library for school projects. And encyclopedias. We had a full set of those at home, so I used them often. Even when we did get Internet, "The Internet" counted as 1 source in your research paper and you needed to have at least 3 or more. So you still had to use books.

 

[John Connor]

The Internet entered its heyday when I was in Jr high. Even then I'd go to the school library and pop in the Encyclopedia Encarta CD and watch things like the moon landing or the Hindenburg disaster.

 

[slag]

I don't understand this.

Wall of text...

I had dial up in 1993 through the university. I had it until at least 2001 to 2002 and remember how it was to write papers, research, etc, before that as well. I brought this up because my son was complaining about a slow download he had last night and he was downloading a several hundred mb patch for a game that was going to take less than a minute. It was then I realized how he has no clue what we had to deal with before broadband and having to dial up to get on the internet. He has no concept of that and it sounds like 100 years ago when in reality, it wasn't that long ago.

That's what this conversation is about.

 

[John Connor]

that was going to take less than a minute.

OMFG! Less than a minute? I had to wait at least 30 minutes to download the required files for a mod used for BF2 called AIX. Not to mention how big CentOS is. Geesh... kids these days. LOL

 

[John Connor]

Best way to test. Tether your phone to the computer. Of course you need just 3G as well.

 

[IBMJunkman]

I worked in Milan in the 90s decade. I introduced them to CompuServe. The company signed up for a carrier and the tech guy and I used CompuServe like crazy. Got the first months carrier bill. $30k. Seems we were using a packet system and not a normal connection. Luckily the I.T. Boss was a softy and paid the bill.

 

[Ken g6]

You can throttle speed in Pfsense and possibly other firewalls, but it won't give the "true" experience of dialing in and listening to that glorious sound.

You could always play this before starting the firewall: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dial_up_modem_noises.ogg

 

[Ruptga]

Take them "camping" someplace with cabins but no cell reception or WiFi. It won't really be camping because you'll be in a house, but that's a separate life experience anyway. Once or twice per day drive them to cell reception, but don't let them use tablets, only a single phone, and only stay for an hour. Bring a TV/VCR and any VHS you still have laying around, a twenty pound encyclopedia, and maybe an old Encarta CD. Stay there a week, and make them bring some homework to do while cut off so that they get the full experience. Optional: bring an ancient laptop loaded with DOSBox and copies of Scorched Earth, etc.

 

[ImpulsE69]

BTW you don't have to do anything extreme. Just download Netlimiter and limit the bandwidth to whatever you want and enjoy!