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I knew a guy who ran a small ISP in the Dayton, OH area. He went from having banks of external modems on POTS lines connected to multi-port serial cards attache
by EvanAnderson 7y ago
I knew a guy who ran a small ISP in the Dayton, OH area. He went from having banks of external modems on POTS lines connected to multi-port serial cards attached to a Windows NT Server 3.51 machine to an Ascend router with a PRI and "digital modems" (CODECs in DSPs, no doubt) to finally using an outsourced dial provider, all in the space of about 18 - 24 months. I wish I'd been a little older and a little more business savvy at the time. It was clearly a wild time, and was probably lots of fun.
- icedchai 7y agoI remember working in the "server room" of one of the early ISPs. There were about 100 individual phone lines coming off the wall, each going into a modem. It was like a river of phone cable. Each modem also had its own serial cable and power brick, too, of course. The bricks were pretty large, so there were power strips chained 3 layers deep. It felt about 100 degrees in there (no AC or cooling of any kind.) Thinking about it now, I'm surprised the whole place didn't melt down.