Dialup

Dialup was a popular way of connecting to the internets at least 100 years ago. It changed the lives of 13-year-old boys and 16-year-old girls everywhere because it meant they could access virtually all the knowledge in the world in the comfort of their basement.

Re-enactment of a 24k JPG image loading on a dialup connection.

Oldfags can literally shit binary!

Dialup & Entertainment

Access to dialup meant you could;

• Download ASCII porn.
• Chat with strangers and become 14/f/cali without the expensive surgical procedures and moving costs.
• Download some more porn, provided it was under 4kb otherwise it would take all day.
• Create a homepage on geocities about you and your interests. Complete with a visit counter; dark blue on black text; a guestbook; and a "best viewed with IE" label, as if you had any fucking idea about the differences between web viewers.
• Look at porn slooooooowly load.
• Upload pornDownload speeds were rated at 56kbps, but actual transfer rates were in the single digits. Dial up was worse than cable coaxial cable when it came to the ratio of speeds on receive channel versus return channels. So, uploading was like downloading, only shittier.
• Ruin your parents' credit score by subsequently running up their phone bill demolishing any chance that they would be able to pay their mortgage. Good job, faggot. You are responsible for the global economic crisis.

Why it Failed

Dialup was as slow as Stephen Hawking running the 440. Dialup modems made an odd screeching and beeping sound which could be turned down in volume to almost zero. An attempted dialing of the modem to connect to Busty Asians takes most of your day, just to have that connection interrupted by a phone call from their mom. It is rumored that prolonged exposure to said noises drove people to commit suicide.

56k and the Now

Nowadays, the only people that still use dialup are AOLers, old people, Mainers, African Americans, WKD and You. Should you encounter a dialup user online, make sure to link them here.

See Also

• America Online
• Compuserve
• Earthlink

Dialup is part of a series on Softwarez Visit the Softwarez Portal for complete coverage.