Talk:Dial-up Internet access

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Could someone with a better source replace the statistic provided by the GameFAQs poll?. GameFAQs is a videogame-related site and its polls are hardly statistically proper. The site targets gamers and, as such, its polls are likely to be voted on by people with a high inclanation to use a broadband connection (Gamers are more likely to have broadband). I think it would be more proper to use a poll from a more reputable statistical source. The GameFAQs poll information is OK when no other data is available, but it would be best to remove it once someone brings a more accurate statistical source.

What is BROADBANS? I tried loooking it up - nothing. Teamgoon 14:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at http://www.myispfinder.org/tutorials/ and didn't find it terribly helpful, but very ad laden. Any objections to me pulling it out? Josh Parris 01:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree that the link is NOT good. I counted a total of 7 "tutorials", which consist of a single screenshot, and a sentence or two of rudimentary explanation. The density of ads supercedes content, which is a classic sign of a pointless site. Remove it, Josh! — Fudoreaper 18:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Then please suggest what you would like to see on this page. If you would like to see all ads removed consider it done. We truely are attempting to offer dialup related content for the education of the public. Look forward to your suggestions. —preceding unsigned comment by User:Hiii98 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia is not the appropriate venue in which to advertise your site, be it personal or professional.--||bass 01:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The thing I noticed most about the tutorials is that they were images that demanded I click on the right parts of the images, but didn't offer visual hints that I needed to do that to make the tutorial progress. Josh Parris 00:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

it s not real  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.46.17.105 (talk) 13:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply] 

No mention is made of high-speed dial-up, and I've never used it and can't find non-corporate/advertising explanations of the technology. Can anyone expand on this? —68.62.17.196 00:49, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Whoops, just found what i was looking for: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/high-speed.htm  —68.62.17.196 00:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The noises need to be mentioned.

Modern modems mute those. --Trusader 02:58, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I mean wouldn't it be cool if you could come to this page and click play on a little media box and hear the sweet, soothing sounds of a dial up connection being established? That mess used to be a no. 1 hit!--Nick??? 09:21, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Audio Dial-Up Noises  Done

Cheers. Brings back memories. Terrible, horrific memories.. Rehevkor ✉ 15:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be pointed out that, now that a lot of people are eschewing land-line phones (and using internet to the point that the phone is useless for calls), the price of dial-up internet now basically INCLUDES the price of the phone line, which puts it up pretty high. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 23:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Will there always be a way to connect via dial-up? Many older computer simply cannot acsess broadband, so will there be a time when they cannot be used? Or is there a way of connecting a dial-up modem even if only broadband service is supplied? Liamoliver 20:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Eventually, I believe dial-up will be replaced by other ways of "broadband", even if that means a "narrowband". What I mean is that fax/modems will be replaced more and more by cable modems and dsl transceivers (that's how it's called, right?), even if the company will only give a small transmission capacity to the subscriber. That's probably because the cost of having a telephone call only to access Internet is becoming too high (specially in countries where large phone service usage still is beyond the buying power of most consumers), and many other ways of access like local wireless ISPs are probably one of the ideal dial-up substitutes (price + performance wise). If you take into account that even fixed phone service (typical POTS) by itself is going to be replaced by more efficient ways of voice communication like VoIP (specially after QoS improves, that is), I think what I said really makes sense. Finally, it may be good to add that trend (if nobody did already) as long as we find an objective statistical report about that. Davidcesarino 15:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PROBLEM: Cable, DSL, or VOIP services do not work during power outages. I would not want to be cut-off from civilization if another 9/11 happened, if I was hit by another Katrina, or if a blizzard destroyed the power transformer. The phone line is typically the only thing still working in those cases. Therefore phone lines serve as an important back-up during emergencies. ---- As for dialup, companies like Netzero or Netscape will continue offering it as long as they can still make money. They are only charging $7.00 per month now, so I'm not sure how much longer they can exist on such low incomes. ---- Theaveng (talk) 12:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you need a dial-up modem during a power outage? Your computer still needs electricity. Rchard2scout (talk) 20:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop battery, home-produced electricity. —ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ (ᚷᛖᛋᛈᚱᛖᚳ) 03:25, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I take issue with the statement 'Dial-up requires no additional infrastructure on top of the telephone network.' There was a huge infrastructure put in place in each country with a large number of dial-up users. Typically modem servers have been installed in local and trunk exchanges to groom dial-up interent traffic off the PSTN and onto an IP network. Without this flat-rate dial-up internet (FRIACO) would be uneconomic. As broadband became more available and dial-up demand decreases this infrastructure becomes redundant, the situation in each country is different. John a s (talk) 00:05, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements made *internal to the ISP's building* is not part of the infrastructure which is *external* to the ISP building. External to the building, nothing was changed..... it's still the same voice-quality, 4000-hertz bandwidth lines that we've always used.

The only part of that sentence that is incorrect is saying "infrastructure on top of". Infrastructure can not lie on top of something because the word "infra" means bottom. The infrastructure is the foundation. ---- Theaveng (talk) 11:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This now reads "Dial-up connections to the Internet require no infrastructure other than the telephone network and the modems and servers needed to make and answer the calls." --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:38, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Stop writing shit in this article without a citation for it," is very, very poor netiquette. Take a moment to read this: Calm down. ---- Theaveng (talk) 11:49, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Section:

In analog serial communications modems, once the connection is established, the data communications session consumes all available bandwidth.[citation needed] Often there is no backchannel capacity for the modem to communicate connection status to the end user or local computer.[citation needed] During the connection negotiation phase, modems transmit the connection speed to the attached computer in status reports. If the base data rate changes at a later time, there is no way to indicate this change to the local computer during the data communications session.[citation needed]

User:Kbrose, the Hayes command set method of modem control has stayed pretty much unchanged since the 1980s:

• AT&F
• ATD 0000000
• CONNECT 48000
• data session begins, and we are out of modem command mode
• To talk to the modem directly again, send +++, and wait about one second for OK

Could we conceivably keep dropping into command mode every five seconds to query the modem about its current transfer rate? Why yes, we could. But we would keep severely interrupting communications due to the required 0.5 to 1.0 sec pause after the +++ to drop to command mode, during which time no data can be sent over the channel.

PPP in Windows and just about everything else acts on the principle that once the session connects and leaves modem command mode there is no further hardware status information, and the PPP session operates blind to the modem status, other than being interrupted by NO CARRIER.

The situation is quite annoying with regard to USB and soft modems, since there is so much more status information about the data pump that could be communicated to the end-user outside of the single serial command/data channel, but is not. DMahalko (talk) 20:40, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There were plenty of modems that had continuous monitoring interfaces, including ISDN dialup modems with dedicated channels and SNMP capable devices. Low-end consumer modems was only a section of the market. The prose still is questionable with dubious terms, such as 'all available bandwidth' Kbrose (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I like how you speak of this in the past tense. As I am someone forced to use dialup because there is no other option, I have looked high and low for such a 56k modem offering capabilities as you describe, and none are capable of providing such information real-time other than the old SupraFaxModem 33.6, with the status visible via a dot-matrix display directly on the front of the modem itself.

Also ISDN is a dialup modem service only in the vaguest sense. ISDN is typically locked to a specific carrier or function and isn't normally used to just randomly dial connections to remote sites.

The bandwidth available on a serial line using the Hayes command set is fully occupied with the data session at any baud. You can't get any device information simultaneously with the data session, and PPP doesn't support doing that, either.

DMahalko (talk) 21:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.161.12.193 (talk) 13:54, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted the "Performance assessment" section. It was completely unsourced. It has been marked as disputed since August 2009. I found it confusing and it wasn't really about performance assessment. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This article talks about dial-up in the US; what about outside the US? What about China and Africa, do they still use dial-up?--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dial-up access is a more appropriate term, since dial-ip is not limited to Internet access only; the same method can be used to remote access closed networks such as Bulletin board systems, FidoNet, or Home banking services, using many different protocols. --82.179.218.11 (talk) 12:52, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I concur with the above comment. In the context of data communications, the term "Dial-up" (or "Dialup") can refer to a lot of scenarios where Internet Protocol is not necessarily involved, such as those mentioned above, and also UUCP, and the use of teletypes and other terminals (and emulators) to access timesharing systems and the like (in fact, the "UUCP" entry's reference to "dial-up" is currently redirected to "Dial-up Internet access", which is unfortunate; there may be other cases of this). Either this entry needs to be made more general, or there needs to be a new entry for generic "Dial-up" ("Dialup"), perhaps with disambiguation. -- HLachman (talk) 04:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The article is very (if not exclusively) Internet-centric and must be made more general, as anybody involved with computer networking within the past ~25-30+ years or so knows that Internet access is only one use for modem communication over telephone lines. The article should be rewritten as "Dial-up" or "Dial-up computer networking" and the Internet-related code kept in a seperate section within called "Dial-up Internet access" or something to that effect. -- MXocross (talk) 04:19, 2013 May 18 (GMT)

uh huh, I used to call into a DECVAX daily at work with a 1200baud MODEM in my ibm to process our companys accounting, which is about as far seperated from the internet as you can get. time to move the articel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.30.233 (talk) 20:38, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

*Strongly support, since Internet access is only one application of a dial-up data connectivity. The title "Dial-up Internet access" discounts the many non-Internet uses of modems, e.g. TDD relays, bulletin-board systems, automated teller machines, remote maintenence, etc. The article should be retitled "Dial-up", "Dial-up access" or something of the sort (as mentioned above) and a section given therein explaining its use as a means of accessing Internet service providers.— comment added 00:06, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Unless I missed it somewhere, the article doesn't spell out the fact that, unlike broadband services, even those such as DSL which use the phone line, the dial-up connection is using the telephone service itself for the connection, and as such, phone calls can neither be initiated nor received on the phone line during the internet dial-up session.

I guess this issue is eluded to where it states "In analog serial communications modems, once the connection is established, the data communications session consumes all available bandwidth."; however it isn't really spelled out in practical terms exactly what that implies.

TimHoltz (talk) 15:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. I made a change to cover this. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As an example, Netscape ISP uses a compression program that squeezes images, text, and other objects at a proxy server,

'squeezes' ??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.193.189.151 (talk) 10:00, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In 1979, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin, graduate students for Duke University, would create an early predecessor to dial-up Internet access – called the USENET

Usenet was a message board service. I think you meant UUCPNET.

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"The Internet speed using this technology can drop to 21.6 kbit/s or less." What? Drop from what? What is the speed dropping from? This sentence makes no sense. Kind regards, JJK2000 (talk) 05:57, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"One contributing factor is the bandwidth requirements of newer computer programs, like operating systems and antivirus software". What? Isn't streaming and video a larger contributor to bandwidth requirements nowdays? This seems like it was written in 2005. Kind regards, JJK2000 (talk) 05:59, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]