Dial-up Access: 1HN kbps Purgatory

Let's set the way-back machine to the 1980s. Remember the movie Wargames, starring a young Matthew Broderick as a teenager who inadvertently hacks into an American defense system computer called WOPR (or "Joshua" for reasons explained in the movie) and is then caught up in a game of Cat and Mouse with the military? If you saw that movie, you had to feel bad for Ally Sheedy's character because she gets dragged into the whole affair by Broderick's character, but inexplicably falls for him. Have you ever read Wild at Heart by John Eldridge? That would give insights as to why she falls for him... Anyway, one of the intriguing observations one may make about Wargames was the modem; it was one of those lock-on models that required the user to place the phone receiver over the modem itself before the computer dialed up an access number. Ah, modern technology...

Now, as many of you are aware, I am a huge homer for retrotechnology. Obviously, I love old video games, especially from the time of the early Sega-Nintendo console wars. Also, I like VHS... Honestly, I like those old videotapes. And, I certainly like old TV shows, classic music, black and white movies, Transformers made out of metal (at least partly), and other such relics from what is slowly becoming a rosier and rosier past. Yet, there are some things that I do NOT look back on with much fondness; one of those things was dial-up access to the Internet.

Okay, let's take a deep breath and say the following together:

Dial-up modem

Feeling a little queasy? Let's try it again:

Dial-up modem

(Now, I feel queasy)

As far as I know, the 1980s wasn't the true start to distance connections between computers, but I do know that dial-up access would continue well into the 1990s and even the 2000s. For me, I only experienced dial-up as an observer for much of the 80s and 90s as friends dialed into bulletin boards, and later America On-Line, Compuserve, and other such Internet Service Providers (ISP) at 300 baud. In 1998, I owned my first very own Windows PC (an AMD K6-2 system that ran at 300 MHz of raw power); before that time, I used to use an old Intel 8088 XT PC at my parents' house. After I had purchased that AMD-driven PC, I really became interested in PC building and customization, and my friends Wilson, Ray, and Julian were, as well. Wilson and Ray used to talk about T1 lines, marveling at the possibility of being free from dial-up purgatory.

Dial-up... I used to log in to Bruin On-Line (even though I had already graduated, I had access through my friend Ray, who worked at UCLA) and wait for that crackling digital tone signaling a successful connection. Then, I used to initiate Windows Update (I think Windows 98 had this...) and wait for hours as the most recent service pack was downloaded. Sometimes, I would stay online all night until the download was complete. I remember downloading files from the Internet and having to use third-party programs like Net Vampire to resume downloads if the connection was broken somehow or if one experienced a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) during download. I also remember the frustration of bottlenecking that occurred when downloading a popular file (like a game demo) and having to contend with bitrates of less than 1 kbps. Didn't it bother anyone else that even though your modem was advertised as 56 kbps, you never get even half that?!

(Taking a deep breath...)

Man, when I look back at the train wreck that was dial-up, I have to be fair and say that it was all we knew back then. Unless you had a grand or two to get a T1 line installed at your house or apartment, all that we could do was use our "56 kbps" modem (internal or external? I always went internal), pay some ISP a crazy rate, and then tie up our land lines for hours on end. Thankfully, I was first exposed to the wonders of Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (now DSL) in 2001 in Japan, as well as to download speeds that were a bit more humane. Now, I have DSL service that downloads at 3 Mbps. Okay, that's slow compared to what's out there now, but I pay a flat rate for it each month and I'm happy.

Remember when we had to pay ISPs per hour? Don't get me started!