I see the occasional post with the warning of "dial-up beware", due to there being lots of pictures in the post. Is this still necessary?

Question:
Do you use a dial-up connection to access the internet?

Choices:
Yes
No
Not certain - I mostly just shout at the Internet

 

Anything less than 1.0 Mbps would be considered dial-up speeds. Most folks have 100 Mbps in the home if not 1.0 Gbps. All orders of magnitude and relative to where you are.

Last time I used dial up was at a warehouse I rented. Nothing there at the time even resembled high speed. Close to ten years ago. Actually served the purpose at the time. I guess like all dial up. Just slow.

2005 was probably the last time...used my LG flip phone to connect my laptop to the internet to get my email.

My parents got cable internet in 2003/4 and I thought even that was late to ditch dialup. I guess some folks are really out there.

With the complexity of nearly every web page these days I would be surprised if anything would even load on dial up any more.

I will say what's nice about SIGforum is the simple interface. It's one of the few things that will still load when I have almost no signal on my phone. Thanks Para!

With a cable modem that I just tested at 66 mbps, I'm "spoiled" and would have to be in dire straits to have to go back to dial-up.

quote:

Is there ANYONE who still uses dial-up?

Bendable? This was some time ago, however.

Haven't used dial up in years, but the "Dial up beware" warning isn't obsolete, for reasons other than "dial up". Mobile devices, particularly older ones, don't have near the bandwidth of a typical home Internet connection, and those slow speeds are very impacted by photo heavy pages. The cell phone I replaced 6 months ago had become OK for reading email, but useless for loading any but the simplest web pages.

Remote areas often aren't served by cable, and may only have access to the Internet via dial up or DSL, which is quite slow compared to the 100 mbps many enjoy. My mother-in-law lives in Michigan's upper peninsula and cable Internet service on a good day rarely tops 30 mbps. Not enough to stream a TV show or movie. They still have DVD rental stores in her town because nobody has enough bandwidth to stream video over the Internet.

There was a member last year or the year before who said he only had 10MBs of bandwidth per week. I realize that's a limit on data and not speed, but still shows that people have limitations in this day and age.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
Bendable?

Well, that would explain why he's so adamant in his proclamations that nobody should ever be allowed to post photos over 400x400.

I've got to wonder if there is any real savings for dial-up.

Those that still have it you are paying for an additions line or just your regular phone line.

Besides my parents and older family members most people I know don't even have land lines anymore. Come to think of it I don't know anyone under 50 that has a land line still.

I speedtest.net tested my current connection. Im on my phone. Wifi got me 6Mbps down and 5Mbps up. 4g cell internet got me 9Mbps down and .47Mbps upload.

A couple TVs in the house are most likely streaming netflix, so my 4g was faster than my apartments wifi. But the upload on the wifi was fantastic, comparitively.

Still a few folk who are remote enough that copper line access is all there is for them. Either dial up or DSL.

Coax cable is predicated on user density and subscribers to pay for and maintain the plant making it unavailable in many rural areas.

Some satellite services require a wired phone line, (for upstream). Hughesnet does not. But it is not available in all areas.

bendable's Intergalactic Mothership Service™ likely is still using RSP/TP (Roswell Standard Protocol/Terra Protocol), and that is like, so 1940s...

quote:

Originally posted by mkueffer:
Anything less than 1.0 Mbps would be considered dial-up speeds. Most folks have 100 Mbps in the home if not 1.0 Gbps. All orders of magnitude and relative to where you are.

Speedtest says the average download is 55 Mbps.

What are your speeds based on?

I run about 212 MBPS on google fiber.

Cable is not available in my neighborhood. I have DSL and get about 4 MB down, right around 1 up. The folks on the other side of the highway from me don't even have DSL. Not sure if it's true dial up or not. We are talking $600k houses and up too!

DSL 6mb down .7 up; dang glad to have it too.

It is not uncommon for our service to be less than 1 meg, dialup speeds by most standards. For that privilege we pay a hefty $200 a month (includes our land line).

I can't even begin to tell you the trouble it took just to get those speeds....and we live in city limits. Across the street from the high school and middle school.

Remote villages have better internet than we do.

Isn't asking "does anyone still use dialup" kind of like asking "are you asleep?" If they are, they can't answer you!

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by mkueffer:
Anything less than 1.0 Mbps would be considered dial-up speeds. Most folks have 100 Mbps in the home if not 1.0 Gbps. All orders of magnitude and relative to where you are.

Speedtest says the average download is 55 Mbps.

What are your speeds based on?

Just the normal home network speeds. 10/100/1000 Mbps. Most folks also bo not realize that the consumer grade router/firewalls do not have high throughput to support 1Gbps speeds from the provider if it's available to them.

I have 300/20 service from Spectrum. It's great but I know that my hardware tops out at 250Mbps so that is what I can get consistently. I am allowed 2 connections to the provider modem, and one for my personal network and one for the work setup. Work limits my connection to 60/10 simply because they need to limit the 1000's of inbound home connections.

Most provider networks get refreshed every 3-5 years to keep upping the total capacity of their networks. That results in customers getting the speed bumps.

I'm not impressed with any of the speed test sites. I run Speedtest.com and receive shit results 100/10, run he speed test on Spectrum.com and get 250/20. I know what my equipment can do (I have access to 40G/10G equipment ) and I think that the folks with the lower speeds never run speed test like the bandwidth hogs do.