3 ms·

at 858 bytes, even if you were able to connect at a full 56k connection on your modem (many people could only get some lower fraction, like 33.6 or 28.8 because

at 858 bytes, even if you were able to connect at a full 56k connection on your modem (many people could only get some lower fraction, like 33.6 or 28.8 because of line noise), it would still take almost an eigth of a second to download the button if your connection did nothing but that. Designing for the web in the 90's and early 2000's was so much more a matter of picking the right trade-offs to make. Shitty trade-offs like "should I make this button worse to shave off 100 bytes? By itself it won't matter, but if I do it to all the butons and icons, that first page load might be a whole second or two faster..."

dspillett 6y ago
In '98 not many would even have 56K - unless adoption was much quicker elsewhere than here (UK). The first units didn't hit the market until '97, and were not cheap, and the V90 standard followed in early '98. Also it was rare to see more than 48K in my experience, 40K on many lines. Memories of reconnecting and forcing a 36k6 symmetric attempt (anything standard above had upstream at half the rate if down) rather than getting 48 down & 24 up, or less, because I had things to upload and needed the upstream "speed"!
- dwighttk 6y ago
  My 56k modem often got used in 30whatevertheothernumberwas mode for stability of connection because of bad telephone wiring in my house.
- jqcoffey 6y ago
  If memory serves 56K was pretty widespread in _availability_ by 1998. I worked at a small local ISP in San Diego from 95ish to 97ish and they were available at the tail end of my time there. You're right that it was rare to get full 56Kbps especially on the early modems and especially on the dreaded winmodems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem). All that said, I also seem to recall that at least in major cities 56Kbps never really went anywhere as cable modems started becoming widely available.
- kbenson 6y ago
  It probably varied widely based on locale. I did tech support for a Northern California ISP in 1999, and there were plenty of people connecting at 53k, even considering that we were seeing people who were calling because of problems. 48k and 44k were also very common speeds to connect to at that time, but really whether you could connect close to the full speed depended quite a bit on the wiring in your house, from your house to and central office, and also the weather (rainy days resulting in staticy sounding lines for many people, and quite an increase in tech support calls). I also remember a fairly amazing story about how a user (which I never spoke to, but others had) finally diagnosed their own problem where their 1.5 Mbps ADSL connection would have a problem at approximately the same time each evening as when the street lamp turned on. Those old Alcatel 1000 DSL modems had notoriously bad problems with interference.

dspillett 6y ago

In '98 not many would even have 56K - unless adoption was much quicker elsewhere than here (UK). The first units didn't hit the market until '97, and were not cheap, and the V90 standard followed in early '98. Also it was rare to see more than 48K in my experience, 40K on many lines. Memories of reconnecting and forcing a 36k6 symmetric attempt (anything standard above had upstream at half the rate if down) rather than getting 48 down & 24 up, or less, because I had things to upload and needed the upstream "speed"!

dwighttk 6y ago
My 56k modem often got used in 30whatevertheothernumberwas mode for stability of connection because of bad telephone wiring in my house.
jqcoffey 6y ago
If memory serves 56K was pretty widespread in _availability_ by 1998. I worked at a small local ISP in San Diego from 95ish to 97ish and they were available at the tail end of my time there. You're right that it was rare to get full 56Kbps especially on the early modems and especially on the dreaded winmodems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem). All that said, I also seem to recall that at least in major cities 56Kbps never really went anywhere as cable modems started becoming widely available.
kbenson 6y ago
It probably varied widely based on locale. I did tech support for a Northern California ISP in 1999, and there were plenty of people connecting at 53k, even considering that we were seeing people who were calling because of problems. 48k and 44k were also very common speeds to connect to at that time, but really whether you could connect close to the full speed depended quite a bit on the wiring in your house, from your house to and central office, and also the weather (rainy days resulting in staticy sounding lines for many people, and quite an increase in tech support calls). I also remember a fairly amazing story about how a user (which I never spoke to, but others had) finally diagnosed their own problem where their 1.5 Mbps ADSL connection would have a problem at approximately the same time each evening as when the street lamp turned on. Those old Alcatel 1000 DSL modems had notoriously bad problems with interference.