Dial-up

[trevm999]

My wife and I are moving to an acreage at the end of the month. I believe Internet access via Radio is available in the area, but there is a lot of projects we want to do out there and would prefer not to have the distraction. So we're going to give dial up a try. My parents recently just got off dial up, so I know how painfully slow it is to use these days. With my parents, I had them set up with Opera with Turbo enabled and images and scripts disabled. They also had Firefox for when that didn't work out so well. I also made links to the mobile sites of the websites they went to the most.

I'm thinking about doing a similar things, however the company offers a dial-up accelerator, so if I used that and Opera turbo, I think Opera turbo would slow down things. Their dial up accelerator should be faster right? Since their server would be closer, or is it possible that their accelerator would only be a client side one and they don't actually have a server?

I've also considered installing Android in a VM and using Apps. That way most of the data is already downloaded and it is just updating the information from the web.

What do you guys think? What is the fastest way to do dial-up internet?

 

[Pants]

I'm not an expert at dial up but I've tried to optimize my mother's dial up connection and discovered a few things a while back.

Like are the phone lines in the area optimized to unleash the potential of the dial up modem or service? From what I gather some phone lines may get you closer to 56k than others. Does the modem use V90 or V92 standard? V92 will offer better "handshake" speeds. The dial up provider has to match the standard (v90 or c92) in order to benefit from the standard you want. Make sure you dial a number supporting one of those standards... Use updated drivers, too.

Google "how to optimize dial up".

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Ouch..dial up these days! I'd go for a 4G connection if possible, or...ir not..shoot for satellite.

I came from a history of "optimizing" connections..dial up and the early days of broadband, many tools at a site I'm with... www.speedguide.net

Philip released the "Speedguide TCP Optimizer" many years ago in the early days of broadband, and it helped dial up quite a bit too. 'course that was back in the Win9X days...and it was updated to reflect Windows 2000 and Windows XP. He's released newer versions that help Vista and Win 7 a little..but with the built in "self turning" of the network stack in current OS's...not much tweaking you can do.

Todays computers with ample CPU ...current modems are already set with high compression of the COM ports. Years ago one would always get a good hardware controller based modem for best performance...they ran circles around software driven modems...aka "Winmodems".

The ISPs proxy cache for dial up is probably faster than Opera Turbo...yeah...as the data originates from the ISPs data centers. Opera Turbo would have to pull from Operas proxy cache servers...outside the ISPs bandwidth. But then...proxy caching servers also have their own quirks...you'll see what those are once you start using them.

'course adblock plus would also help as a plugin...Chrome or Firefox.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Never go satellite unless you absolutely have to.

My favorite modem back in dial up days was the diamond supramax 56k usb modem...its probably not vista and win7 compatible though but not sure. I was able to ping 110ms to my gaming servers with it.

 

[LedHed]

Dial-Up...Ouch! I live in a rural area in Southwest Louisiana and I have a few clients on dial-up. My concern with dial-up is this, updates. Windows downloads updates automatically when a connection is detected. So, you connect at 56K (which is abysmally slow) and you start trying to surf. Windows detects the connection and simultaneously starts downloading the updates. This makes your already slow internet even slower. I personally think that this makes dial-up unusable. Just imagine trying to download Win7 x64 service pack 1 (over 900 megs) over dial-up. This could easily take several days. Although it is more expensive and has drawbacks (bad weather, bandwidth limits) satellite would be a better choice.

 

[SilverLeaf]

I believe Internet access via Radio is available in the area, but there is a lot of projects we want to do out there and would prefer not to have the distraction. So we're going to give dial up a try.

I can sympathize with your desire to do this. I thought about this as well. Currently my options are similar, but I opted for a 3G tethered smartphone instead. I found that I would frequently need to do some research relevant to whatever projects I was working on (parts diagrams, product information, reviews, and availability, equipment repair manuals, gardening information, weather radar, and so on) Using dial- up gets old pretty quick.

Using 3G also has the "advantage" of discouraging frequent use, depending on the details of your data plan from your provider. So, it helps minimize the distraction effect.

 

[codegreen]

Regarding dial-up accelerators, these work by relaying your connection through a server that compresses images on the fly so your poor dial-up connection doesn't have as much to download. I could be wrong, but I can't see the network distance of the compression service making much difference on dial-up.

Back in the bad old days when I was on dial-up, I used a text-only browser quite a bit. However, these days text-only browsing (no images, no javascript) is not viable. Most sites won't work. I second the recommendation to reconsider 3/4G or satellite. Trying to use today's Internet on dial-up, even for only occasional use, is an exercise in frustration.

 

[mr m]

I still have two users on dial-up. "Excruciating" comes to mind. A lesson in futility. It just isn't realistic or a viable option as others have opined. It's like driving a steam motivated car on todays highways. Go cellular or to the library.

 

[Xander]

Have you considered euthanasia?

 

[damitman]

Dial-up, wow, I remember connecting multipul times in a row and listening to (the hand-shake) and be thrilled to get connected above 14K

now days, dial-up is like pulling a 20ft u-haul with a moped

got a uncle on dial-up, lives out in the booonies, it is unbearable to say the least.

 

[mr m]

Dial-up, wow, I remember connecting multipul times in a row and listening to (the hand-shake) and be thrilled to get connected above 14K

Yeah, I averaged about 24K and sometimes would hit 28K! Oooga!

Then I asked my friend at the phone company to reroute my line which drastically shortened my distance from the CO and then I was surfing at a blistering 52K!

 

[SilverLeaf]

Back in the bad old days when I was on dial-up, I used a text-only browser quite a bit. However, these days text-only browsing (no images, no javascript) is not viable. Most sites won't work. I second the recommendation to reconsider 3/4G or satellite. Trying to use today's Internet on dial-up, even for only occasional use, is an exercise in frustration.

Just for grins, I fired up eLinks to reply to this. Took me a few minutes to refresh my memory, but it seems to work with Technibble. But it's far too cumbersome to use for other than a novelty Really, the only reason I had it even installed was for an incident sometime ago where I completely screwed up X, and had to get online to find a fix.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Never go satellite unless you absolutely have to.

My favorite modem back in dial up days was the diamond supramax 56k usb modem...its probably not vista and win7 compatible though but not sure. I was able to ping 110ms to my gaming servers with it.

Diamonds Supra's had the lowest latency for gamers, I remember reading a comparison and Diamonds Supra 33.6 came in at the lowest...so back then I had to get one. This was during the Quake 1 days....Windows 95b had just came out.

And then the popular USR 56k Externals..I think the model was 5686.
For a while I ran with 2 of them....had them setup "shotgun"...multi-link, back when Microsoft released DUN 1.3 (Dial Up Networking upgrade). I used to resell for an ISP so I had comp accounts and was able to do this.

Lowest latency, back then I also had our clans Quake 2 server at our ISP...so even though I had dial up, I literally just had 1x hop to our server...it sat in their data center that I pop'd into. I would have pings in the 80's. Yup..pings in the 80's with dial up!

When that ISP started offering...naturally I got that. With our gaming servers still in their data center....I would have 1x hop with my DSL, and latency...below 20..usually in the low teens. I'd been to LAN parties with higher latency...LOL.

 

[SilverLeaf]

Oh, the memories. Just recently I was cleaning out some old parts boxes and came across my old USR 28.8k internal ISA bus modem. I hated to get rid of it because I remember paying like $159 for it when it was new....and that was a lot of money back then. But then again, I remember paying like $40/MB for SIMM's as well. I doubt that I still have any of those, but I know I still have some EDO around here somewhere.

 

[trevm999]

28K is the max in my current province, but we are moving out of province, and the service provider there still advertises there dial-up, so maybe it will be 56k.

3G/4G isn't available. Turns out it is just out of the stable coverage area for radio wireless internet. So it looks like it will either have to be dial-up or satellite.

Windows detects the connection and simultaneously starts downloading the updates. This makes your already slow internet even slower. I personally think that this makes dial-up unusable. Just imagine trying to download Win7 x64 service pack 1 (over 900 megs) over dial-up. This could easily take several days.

I mainly use Ubuntu, so automatic updates aren't an issue, however that just reminded me that Ubuntu know longer natively supports dial-up connections, so getting that configured might be a headache. Especially if I don't have the internet to help me figure it out...

If the satellite ISP has a "lite" package, that may be the solution to cut back on video streaming, rather than going the dial up route (which would cut back on pretty much everything). Unfortunately, there is no partnership established with the telephone company for satellite internet for rural residents, so I might have to some searching to find a suitable company.

 

[layoric]

I'd look at going with wireless repeaters. They have outdoor antennas that can go for miles. I was going to do that for a customer as a project but he ended up selling his house.

 

[glricht]

... My concern with dial-up is this, updates. Windows downloads updates automatically when a connection is detected. So, you connect at 56K (which is abysmally slow) and you start trying to surf. Windows detects the connection and simultaneously starts downloading the updates. This makes your already slow internet even slower. I personally think that this makes dial-up unusable. Just imagine trying to download Win7 x64 service pack 1 (over 900 megs) over dial-up. ...

This is exactly why we would change the default Windows update option on a dial PC. Instead of "Automatically download and install Windows Updates", we would set it to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download or install them".

A number of years ago we used to have a lot of dial customers (high-speed was just starting to make inroads). We would change the update option and tell the customer when Windows said there were updates available, dial in just before going to bed and let the downloads happen.

The other option was for us to periodically take their PC back to the shop for normal preventative maintenance including applying all outstanding updates.

Leaving the option to "autodownload/update" when there was an update available made the Internet almost unusable.

We're down to 1 or 2 dial customers now, thank goodness!

 

[trevm999]

We ended up going with no internet for now. I found a company that covers our area for internet via radio and fiber backbone, so that will probably be what we get. It will be faster than we like, but the same price as satellite, and for 4G we would need a booster, and that seems too expensive for a lesser service, but at least cellphones would work in the house then.

 

[brandonkick]

I would NEVER go back to dial up. I remember those days with a fine hatred.... surfing and trying to download stuff at 5-10K... I think the best I ever got was along the lines of 15K with dialup.

When we got our first cable connection I think it was a 3Mbps down / .75Mbps up from a company called adelphia. WOW. I think I was online for a week straight.

I remember thinking... the internet is usable now!

 

[Martyn]

This thread takes me back to the days when I paid £186 for an external 9600bps modem