5 ms·
POTS modems don't do great on latency either. I never managed under about a quarter second latency on dial-up. The first hop (your modem'd DAC and the ISP modem
by giantrobot 5y ago
POTS modems don't do great on latency either. I never managed under about a quarter second latency on dial-up. The first hop (your modem'd DAC and the ISP modem's ADC) was usually around 75-100ms all by itself. So even today with pretty fast networks (compared to the heyday of modems) you're easily looking at base latency of a quarter second.
- icedchai 5y agoModem latency was crap. That was another reason a 64K single channel ISDN connection felt so much faster, even though the bandwidth wasn't that much more. ISDN latency was wayyy better since it was digital: 10 to 20ms vs 200ms minimum with an analog modem. Some early ISPs I worked with started with 56K leased lines. The latency there was like night-and-day compared to a 56k modem.
- giantrobot 5y agoMy first experience with an ISDN connection was mind blowing. I had only ever used analog modems prior. So I'm just expecting faster downloads for large files and pages would load faster. It was a 64k line so I was expecting it to be twice as my modem at home. Web pages just appeared (modulo Netscape connection limitations). A fresh page load felt as fast as a cached page load on my analog modem. It was nuts. It was most noticeable in a handful of games of Quake I played. I got to experience the joy of being a Low Ping Bastard and actually landing a few hits on people.