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Reported: AOL finally shuts down its dial-up service

Well that does not bode well for the MAGArats in the southern states. How will they get their propaganda now?
 
There's a long history of technology sticking around a lot longer than I would expect. Sony was still producing cassette walkmen up till 2004, with teh last care to have a cassette player in 2014, about the same time as the last VHS only player was produced. FAXes are still around and I'm pretty sure western union will still wire money around the world and they only stopped sending telgrams in the 2000s.

I'm sure there's others.
 
Thermal said:
Dial up was still around? The ◊◊◊◊ I learn here.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it's all some people need. Looks like around 175k people just don't need high speed internet. If you don't get on much and already pay for a landline, it's probably not even all that terrible anymore.

Too bad for those people. I would bet satellite is their only option. Which I would assume is much more, but admittedly I didn't read the article.
 
brrrrrrrrrr ping-ing ping-ing wheee tssssssssssssssssssssss.

I can't now remember the movie* but I remember a particular shot of a character's home PC, open on their emails, and a message arrives.

That was a shock. Not that the PC was left on unattended, it was that it was clearly left online. Being in a country which never had free local calls, the idea of leaving a computer dialed up online when not in use seemed ridiculous. And somehow I got the impression this was a home computer which wasn't even tying up the home phone line to be online. What sorcery was this?

*Some Sandra Bullock thing maybe about being a victim of hacking or some such fashionable panic.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
brrrrrrrrrr ping-ing ping-ing wheee tssssssssssssssssssssss.

I can't now remember the movie* but I remember a particular shot of a character's home PC, open on their emails, and a message arrives.

*Some Sandra Bullock thing maybe about being a victim of hacking or some such fashionable panic.
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The Net?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
brrrrrrrrrr ping-ing ping-ing wheee tssssssssssssssssssssss.

I can't now remember the movie* but I remember a particular shot of a character's home PC, open on their emails, and a message arrives.

That was a shock. Not that the PC was left on unattended, it was that it was clearly left online. Being in a country which never had free local calls, the idea of leaving a computer dialed up online when not in use seemed ridiculous. And somehow I got the impression this was a home computer which wasn't even tying up the home phone line to be online. What sorcery was this?

*Some Sandra Bullock thing maybe about being a victim of hacking or some such fashionable panic.
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A bunch of my friends had a phone line just for dial-up internet. Rich folk...
 
Thermal said:
The Net?
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Thanks. Yes. (So long as I'm not misremembering and it's actually a scene from a different movie. Right era though.) The only thing I can confidently remember about The Net is I watched a few minutes and flipped over.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Thanks. Yes. (So long as I'm not misremembering and it's actually a scene from a different movie. Right era though.) The only thing I can confidently remember about The Net is I watched a few minutes and flipped over.
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I vaguely recall the same shock you had when I saw it. "Where's all that noisy connection time?" I quite literally didn't know that was a thing. Where I lived at the time (fairly deep in the woods), we didn't even have cable or decent cellphone reception
 
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plague311 said:
A bunch of my friends had a phone line just for dial-up internet. Rich folk...
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I remember spotting that a friend had an ISDN line installed. In their own home! 64 kilobits per second, up and down! Imagine the inconceivable glamour of that! (I recognised the network terminal from using them at work.) He was something in banking and his employer had paid for it.
 
I had been hanging out in local BBSs around 1991-1992, and everybody was buzzing about the internet. IIRC I signed up for the free trial, decided I was interested, but after some more research I decided to go with a "real" internet provider, because I wanted access to the other parts of the net than the web, like IRC and Usenet. Was on dial-up until about 2000 and I can still remember the day I upgraded to a 28.8 baud modem from the old 14.4 baud. Why, I could download a 400 kb file in only a few minutes!
 
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In late 1993 I bought a 486/25 desktop with 4 massive megs of RAM and was soon online with Demon over a 14.4K dialup connection. I was briefly the coolest - and poorest - kid on the block.

My kids have 1 gig fibre connections in their places and 5G-enabled mobiles. While I'm sitting in my chalet high in the Alps and enjoying 700 megs duplex, which is frankly absurd as we didn't even get 4G here until 2019.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I remember spotting that a friend had an ISDN line installed. In their own home! 64 kilobits per second, up and down! Imagine the inconceivable glamour of that! (I recognised the network terminal from using them at work.) He was something in banking and his employer had paid for it.
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A client of mine was an early adopter and had twin 64K ISDN lines and a liberal after-hours usage policy. That's when I discovered the joys of downloading. I was a Linux bloke from early days, my first home Linux machine running Red Hat 4.2, and the speed of acquiring updates and new packages...
 
plague311 said:
A bunch of my friends had a phone line just for dial-up internet. Rich folk...
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I paid only a few dollars more a month for a second line (plus the $300 to $400 a month in long distance charges thanks to FidoNet and EchoMail).
 
plague311 said:
A bunch of my friends had a phone line just for dial-up internet. Rich folk...
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I'm one of the people that did that.

In Australia, in Canberra for ◊◊◊◊'s sake! There was no guarantee of quality of service from the sole Australian phone provider.

The best I could get was if I paid for a second phone line and called it a 'dedicated fax line'.

For that, Telecom would guarantee a BAUD rate of 9600.
 
There was a while when the only reason I had a phone line was for dial up. A short time to be sure.
 
Many Australian capital city specialist hospitals still have a couple of these connected to dedicated internal analogue phone lines. They are for ultra-remote outback sites who have only landline access for hospital digital services. They are the "last resort" data connection option. Nowadays, of course, they use satellite phones and digital links most of the time.

1755042315006.png
 
Reported: AOL finally shuts down its dial-up service

Did you really need to report them, snitch? Do you know what dial-up internet providers do to rats? Ya me neither, but I guarantee you it will be slow and excruciating.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Many Australian capital city specialist hospitals still have a couple of these connected to dedicated internal analogue phone lines. They are for ultra-remote outback sites who have only landline access for hospital digital services. They are the "last resort" data connection option. Nowadays, of course, they use satellite phones and digital links most of the time.

View attachment 62900
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AT

OK
 
We did troubleshooting of modem connection problems so often I think I got to where I could just about whistle a V.34 connection sequence.
 
I started with AOL dial-up (and a pre-owned IBM ThinkPad) about thirty years ago. Not too bad actually. I think I was paying about $30 a month for the connection. About twenty years ago I dropped the dial-up via AOL customer service. The agent asked me did I want to maintain my account. I said sure. Then the agent asked me, "Do you want to maintain your billing?" I said, no, why? I'm using Firefox, I can access AOL for free. The agent said -- actually said! -- "I understand, but some people like to continue paying. You'd be helping to support AOL." I said I understood that but I was also helping to support a wife and three kids. The agent actually chuckled. Then said, they would be glad to cancel my dial-up and my payment plan and would do so right away.

And they did. Plus thanked me for using AOL.

1755311574834.png
 
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AOL???
Who's that lol

(was a standing joke when AOL CDs often came with computer magazines- totally useless in Australia at the time of course, as AOL wasnt in Australia- still arent lol)

I used to 'sing' along with my modem, as at the time, 'phone number hijackers' were common which could change the dialed number to an international one and run you up a bill in the thousands!!!- I knew the tones off by heart and 'sang along' with it- if it was a different 'song'- hang up and go looking....

Mind you there are still many dialup users around me- sats expensive, and in a (very) rural location like mine, the ADSL stops well before the farms do... (the number of dialup users around here actually GREW considerably a while back- with the shutdown of the 3G network, it effectively meant about half those previously using it were left without any net coverage- 4G data is considerably less in range than 3G, despite Hel$ras claims to the contrary...)
 
AOL was my first service provider. You used to get a free disk at the store good for 90 days of free service, then they wanted to auto debit you for $9.99/mo. The trick was to call them and cancel before you got charged for the paid month, and they would give you another free month or two. I don't think I paid a nickel for my first couple years of internet access. It just went on and on.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I remember spotting that a friend had an ISDN line installed. In their own home! 64 kilobits per second, up and down! Imagine the inconceivable glamour of that! (I recognised the network terminal from using them at work.) He was something in banking and his employer had paid for it.
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I had dual ISDN in my flat in London. Read and weep 128kb!
 
I recall when 56k modems were released and articles were explaining that was pretty much the maximum speed you could have along the copper phone lines. (Think the theoretical maximum was 64k).

Yet.. here I am connected at 67 Mbps over my copper phone line.

(Please do not tell me about fibre to house, it's a very touchy subject for me, I'm not cabled up for it despite there being a junction box almost opposite my front door on the other side of the road.... Up the road from me there are houses built in the 15th century that have fibre.)
 
Darat said:
I recall when 56k modems were released and articles were explaining that was pretty much the maximum speed you could have along the copper phone lines. (Think the theoretical maximum was 64k).

Yet.. here I am connected at 67 Mbps over my copper phone line.

(Please do not tell me about fibre to house, it's a very touchy subject for me, I'm not cabled up for it despite there being a junction box almost opposite my front door on the other side of the road.... Up the road from me there are houses built in the 15th century that have fibre.)
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I'm not an engineer, but 64k (minus overhead, etc.) may be about the maximum speed using audio signals in the frequency range telephone lines could handle. But I share your amazement at how much bandwidth can be squeezed through a copper pair these days.
 
According to Google AI:
In 2002, AOL (America Online) typically charged $23.90 per month for its unlimited dial-up service. This price had increased by $1.95 from the previous rate of $21.95 in July 2001. [Keyword search "aol dial-up charge in 2002"]
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On my job, right after Win95 came out, the HR was giving out free AOL 3.0 discs. That's how I got started. A big problem was, "Honey, can you turn off your dial-up, please. I have to call my sister." Eventually we switched to a fiber optical provider for bundled phone/TV/internet.

1755347444126.jpeg
 
Darat said:
I had dual ISDN in my flat in London. Read and weep 128kb!
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Yeah, you always had two bearers so could dial up both and get 128 kilobits.

By a curious coincidence, we're also just now going through the final throes of nailing down the coffin lid on ISDN. At long last. It's been the absolute mainstay of sports commentary and other outside broadcast stuff for radio for 30 years, but this time they really mean it. Were going over 100% to IP connectivity this year.

Quite sad about that. Nostalgic for the '90s when radio engineers said it stood for It Sometimes Does Nothing and the yet-to-be-trained BT engineers said it was I Still Don't kNow.
 
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