It's interesting that these are exactly the sort of conditions that the internet protocols were designed for. A typical suite of internet software from the 90s

It's interesting that these are exactly the sort of conditions that the internet protocols were designed for. A typical suite of internet software from the 90s would handle easily. One key difference is that client software was installed locally, which (in modern terms) decouples UI from content. As the article points out, the actual data you're dealing with is often measured in bytes. An email reader or AOL Instant Messenger would only have to deal with that data (plus headers and basic login) instead of having to download an entire web app. And since the protocols didn't change often, there was no need to update software every few weeks (or months, or even years). Another key difference, which is less relevant today, is that more data came from servers on the local network. Email and Usenet were both designed to do bulk data transfer between servers and then let users download their individual data off of their local server. As I recall, email servers can spend several days making delivery attempts before giving up.