View Poll Results: How do you connect?
Cable
115
63.54%
DSL
32
17.68%
Dedicated connection, hi (T1, WAN, etc.)
4
2.21%
Dedicated connection, lo (sw56, termserver, etc)
1
0.55%
Wireless, mobile
5
2.76%
Wireless, fixed (antenna on your roof, not WiFi)
1
0.55%
Fiber to home
18
9.94%
DirecPC or other satellite
4
2.21%
Dialup
0
0%
Other (specify)
1
0.55%
Voters: 181. You may not vote on this poll
how do you access teh Interwebz?
11-15-2008, 09:19 AM
#1
Boost Pope
Thread Starter
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
Posts: 33,022
Total Cats: 6,590
how do you access teh Interwebz?
I'm curious as to how our members achieve internet access.
As an example- from time to time we see picture-heavy threads with a warning "56k be damned" (followed by several mocking comments), and it occurs to me that I really have no idea what constitutes "normal" or "average" in terms of internet access.
I've been online since the late 80s, via a dizzying array of methods. In the beginning it was just plain ole' BBS service: 300, then 1200, then 2400, then 9600, then 14.4k, with FidoNet capabilities most of the way (seriously- who didn't think FidoNet was the absolute awesomest **** back in the day?) Intro to the internet was a 14.4 dialup to a BBS that had a Usenet portal. Next was a dedicated 4800bps RS-232 connection to a VAX termserver in the dorm where I was living in college (no, the wiring was not authorized by the university) where I was able to use Pine and Lynx, and then later Trumpet WinSock by way of TIA (you yung'uns have no respect for old-school hacking
). Then I lived for a couple of years in an apartment with two other guys where we had a bank of six (yes, six) 28.8 modems which were kept dialed into a disused and forgotten group of dialin ports at NERDC in Gainesville (which back then was a pretty major supercomputer center) and on our end pooled together via a Slackware machine (no GUI) and distributed via 10base-2 (coax ethernet). And for the past decade I've been on various cable services.
But of course I expect that this probably isn't the norm.
So I'd like to get a running count of how folks are currently accessing the 'net. Yeah, I know everyone has a LAN connection at the office- I'm more interested in your home or primary connection. Feel free to elaborate in posts- always interested in hearing war stories. If you live in a place (apartment, college dorm, etc) that provides wireless access, then you probably fall into the "Dedicated connection, hi" group.
As an example- from time to time we see picture-heavy threads with a warning "56k be damned" (followed by several mocking comments), and it occurs to me that I really have no idea what constitutes "normal" or "average" in terms of internet access.
I've been online since the late 80s, via a dizzying array of methods. In the beginning it was just plain ole' BBS service: 300, then 1200, then 2400, then 9600, then 14.4k, with FidoNet capabilities most of the way (seriously- who didn't think FidoNet was the absolute awesomest **** back in the day?) Intro to the internet was a 14.4 dialup to a BBS that had a Usenet portal. Next was a dedicated 4800bps RS-232 connection to a VAX termserver in the dorm where I was living in college (no, the wiring was not authorized by the university) where I was able to use Pine and Lynx, and then later Trumpet WinSock by way of TIA (you yung'uns have no respect for old-school hacking
). Then I lived for a couple of years in an apartment with two other guys where we had a bank of six (yes, six) 28.8 modems which were kept dialed into a disused and forgotten group of dialin ports at NERDC in Gainesville (which back then was a pretty major supercomputer center) and on our end pooled together via a Slackware machine (no GUI) and distributed via 10base-2 (coax ethernet). And for the past decade I've been on various cable services. But of course I expect that this probably isn't the norm.
So I'd like to get a running count of how folks are currently accessing the 'net. Yeah, I know everyone has a LAN connection at the office- I'm more interested in your home or primary connection. Feel free to elaborate in posts- always interested in hearing war stories. If you live in a place (apartment, college dorm, etc) that provides wireless access, then you probably fall into the "Dedicated connection, hi" group.
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11-15-2008, 10:07 AM
#2
2 Props,3 Dildos,& 1 Cat
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Fake Virginia
Posts: 19,338
Total Cats: 573
is FiOS considered other or dedicated?
at work, we only had a fraction of a T1 (128... slow) up until about a month ago. now we have cable. the streaming ban has been lifted. work was where I heeded the 56k warnings, but now... not so much.
home/Fiber optic
I remember the 1200 baud and waiting for the first interwebz to load over NCSA Mosaic. but our LAN was all ARCnet.
at work, we only had a fraction of a T1 (128... slow) up until about a month ago. now we have cable. the streaming ban has been lifted. work was where I heeded the 56k warnings, but now... not so much.
home/Fiber optic
I remember the 1200 baud and waiting for the first interwebz to load over NCSA Mosaic. but our LAN was all ARCnet.
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. If there is a light mist in the air, forget it.
11-15-2008, 05:26 PM
#15
My parents have that ****. It's terrible. I visited one weekend and torrented a movie. It used up all of their upload bandwidth for the month (1GB!!!) and as such, HTTP requests couldn't even be sent out (aka, no browsing at all). They were pissed. And then I went back to school where I had a 20mb connection. Now I have shitty AT&T 3mb DSL.
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