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Dial-up Internet to be discontinued
- loose-cannon 1y agoI wonder how quickly you can load some of the modern, popular, websites on a dial up connection.
- derwiki 1y agoThis orange site is fine but I wouldn’t hold my breath on any others
- benchly 1y agoSomething low-resource demand (like my blog) would probably be okay, save for a few large pics on some pages. Most people who run in the smolweb circles also like vintage computing, so creating webspaces using only HTML & CSS is common practice, which should do fine over a 56k connection.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoPage loading times would probably be measurable with a sundial or calendar.
- donio 1y agoEasy to see for yourself using the throttling option in the developer tools of popular browsers.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoWe have a whole generation of programmers that will justify 12MB of JavaScript bundles to output "Hello world".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- smelendez 1y agoI’d bet a lot of them are using old computers too, with who knows what browser and OS. It’s probably hard to tell loading issues from rendering issues
- philistine 1y agoYou can test it yourself in the comfort of your gigabit connection. I wanted to test my barrage of very small images using lazy loading on a crappy connection. I learned that Chrome can easily pretend to suck. On Safari you somehow need to download a special tool but it works just as well. Or as worse I guess.
- tonetegeatinst 1y agoDo you know if Firefox or edge has a similar feature and if so what its called?
- blcArmadillo 1y agohttps://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/responsive_design_mode/ https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/respon...
- grishka 1y agoNo need to wonder, just end up in an old building with thick brick walls that are only penetrated by a weak 2G signal and try to load something on your phone.
- wtallis 1y agoNot possible anymore is many areas, where 2G and 3G networks have been shutdown to re-use spectrum for newer standards. The last time I was in a rural area with minimal signal strength, my phone was alternating between satellite-only messaging or 5G with 5-10 MB/s. I was actually able to download a movie in a quite reasonable amount of time, presumably because there wasn't anyone else doing much with the cell tower I was barely in range of.
- tart-lemonade 1y agoOut in rural Michigan, there are plenty of spots where an LTE signal technically exists but you can't do much beyond calls and texts (and even those fail sometimes), and it's interesting to see what apps still work. For instance, YouTube will still load and play videos, albeit at an abysmal pace that's really not worth it (and it's interesting to see how the app prioritizes the video itself over its metadata, to the point that you could watch an entire video in 144p before the channel name and description load), while my bank's app just fails entirely despite ostensibly requiring less bandwidth than video playback.
- duskwuff 1y agoGoogle homepage: two or three minutes A Google SERP with rich content: about 20 minutes A typical Facebook post: ten minutes CNN home page: half an hour YouTube: forget it
- bawolff 1y agoI think chrome dev tools has a button to simulate different internet speeds. But im pretty sure the answer is really damn slow.
- Telaneo 1y agoI know Firefox has it, since I used it to test my own website. Once you go past text and really small images, it starts taking minutes to load.
- timbit42 1y agoYou can save many hours by installing uBlock Origin.
- smitty1e 1y agoOn the topic of technology life cycles, can anyone suggest important writers/references?
- neilpomerleau 1y agohttps://www.dialupsound.com/ https://www.dialupsound.com/
- maxbond 1y agoThanks for making that! Boy is that more annoying than I remembered.
- twilightzone 1y agoThat's subjective! I made a song with that sound in 1998. It was called "Net Pet" and it did pretty well on mp3.com.
- atribecalledqst 1y agoThere's a hip-hop song I like that uses the dial-up sound as a motif: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhOWslHDSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhOWslHDSs The dial-up sound just evokes that early Internet feel so perfectly...
- firesteelrain 1y agoI’d just nod my head to the sound
- altairprime 1y agoIt sounded a lot less enthusiastically piercing through a speaker embedded inside a steel computer :)
- gregsadetsky 1y agoI like this explanatory graphic (after many many years of listening to the dialup sounds) - https://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup-final.png https://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup-final.png And this version combining the graphic and the sound used to make the graphic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo And this alternative version (h/t @Kye): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpMrTxMV6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpMrTxMV6E4
- dlivingston 1y agoI'm surprised it's still being offered period! My parents live in a remote area outside of a rural town in one of the USA's smaller states, and even they haven't had dial-up in ~15 years. We grew up with dial-up until about 2010, when they switched over to (absolutely terrible) satellite internet. HughsNet, I think it was called. Two-ish years ago they switched over to Starlink and it's been working well (when it does work, anyway).
- ack_complete 1y agoApparently they just shut it down in 2024, but a couple of years ago I tested an Atari 1030 modem by dialing out to Earthlink, and it still worked -- successfully connected at 300 baud.
- nosioptar 1y agoI know people just a couple hours from Seattle that still use dial up. Most are older and don't want to spend the obscene prices for satellite, cellular signal isn't good enough out there.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoIs dial up still at 56kbps?
- nosioptar 1y agoAs far as I know. (I haven't personally had dial up in about 20 tears.)
- esseph 1y agoStill over the phone lines, so yep. Extremely lucky if you get that on old copper though.
- chrisco255 1y agoYes. It's a hard limit for old phone lines because they're limited to something like 3.1 khz.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoAre there any sources indicating how many users dial-up still had?
- orthecreedence 1y agoWhen I worked at AOL in 2010, dialup was their biggest source of revenue still. It'd be interesting to see the drop-off since then. I imagine it's trending down pretty quick as the generation using it kicks the bucket.
- firesteelrain 1y agoThere are older generations with aol.com email addresses including my MIL who despite being given multiple gmail addresses over the years still refuses to change and stop paying for it
- wmf 1y agoAOL mail has been free for a long time BTW. You can stop paying and keep the email account.
- firesteelrain 1y agoI will ask her if she still pays. Thank you for the tip. It could save her some noney
- zekrioca 1y agoPlease, let us know what happened, I got curious! :)
- firesteelrain 1y agoSaved her money! Thank you
- 1y ago
- freitasm 1y agoSome time ago there were estimates on the number of people still paying AOL but using a broadband service. I wonder if AOL will stop charging people on dial-up only, or if they will later claim "oops, sorry..."
- ricree 1y ago>This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan, which you can access any time on your AOL plan dashboard. To manage or cancel your account, visit MyAccount Sounds like everyone keeps getting charged, since this is technically part of their "AOL plan", whatever that actually includes.
- 0xy 1y agoBenefits such as virus protection for email that you don't use, and a free AOL Toolbar with shopping offers you don't have installed. Thank you for your $10 a month you forgot we were charging you for 15 years.
- Kye 1y agoThere's some good discussion on this recurring submission about the legendary dial-up process: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.windytan.com%2F2012%2F11%2Fthe-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.windytan.com%2F20... And a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpMrTxMV6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpMrTxMV6E4
- apetresc 1y agoI didn't even know AOL was still around, let alone AOL dial-up.
- benchly 1y agoDo they still offer the floppies with the free hours? I need a new set of drink coasters.
- derwiki 1y agoNo no—the CDs were coasters, the floppies you could put a piece of tape over the protection window and reuse
- 800xl 1y agoI thought they were just a web portal and email service. It is amazing they still offered ISP services this long. They had some pretty unscrupulous business practices back in the day with their free trial CD mailers. My cousin worked in their call center ages ago and would sometimes convince even people who didn't have a computer to pay for the service.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoThey offer a “tech support for old people” service which is actually really good.
- danans 1y agoOne wonders what the dial up ops department/team at AOL even looks like now. I wonder if it's anyone's full time job, or just something that occupies a fraction of their time.
- alex1138 1y agobrrrrrrrrrrr weeeeeeeeeee kzzzzzzzzzzz
- tombert 1y agoMy parents didn't have AOL when I was a kid; we had Prodigy, I think because they had promotions to get a cheap or free computer if you signed up for N years of Prodigy internet. I was always kind of jealous of my friends who had AOL because I wanted the "You've Got Mail!" greeting, and I would see promotions that talk about "AOL Keywords" and I couldn't use those with Prodigy. Amazing to think that AOL still offered dial-up service.
- kylehotchkiss 1y ago3 million CD frisbee salute for our old friend (which pissed off our parents because we held up the phone like loading dynamic drive so they couldn’t call their sister)
- musicale 1y agoMore like 300 million: > AOL's former chief marketing officer Jan Brandt estimates that the company spent more than $300 million handing out all those free trials. The marketing effort allegedly cornered half of the world's CD market. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aol-cd-rom-collecting-thing-180956902/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aol-cd-rom-collect...
- t1234s 1y agoI didn't know AOL was still an ISP
- aussieguy1234 1y agoWell, I guess you won't be hearing this anymore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0
- rerdavies 1y agoIntense nostalgia. It brings me back to a point in time where the world suddenly turned and the possibilities seemed limitless. And all of those possibilities looked a little more idealistic, and a little less mercenary than what we actually got. Not that I'm really complaining. I do like what we got. And curiously different from the AI revolution, where there are no pretensions of idealism at at all, and everyone clearly understands that whoever wins this time will quite literally own the entire world, if the plan succeeds. And that it won't be a pleasant or pretty world for the rest of us, and that all of the leading candidates for King of the Universe don't care at all that the rest of us will be discarded. The complete opposite, in that regard. I shall have to break out my set of AOL CD drink coasters, and put songs from Camelot on permanent repeat in order to mark the passing of an age with the solemnity it deserves.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoI wish we had gotten municipal fiber. Back when telecoms had to lease their lines the competition was great. Cable companies growing fat on outdated cable lines has held many of us back for too long.
- crmi 1y agoCould it be, AOL ending dialup – marks the official end of the dotcom bubble? Which means the next one, whatever that may be... starts now?
- MaintenanceMode 1y agoWow. What a run. Has there been another slow networking technology that's lasted for so long?
- ajb 1y agoTelegraph
- can16358p 1y agoMore surprised that there was still dial up service in existence in 2025. I'd expect it to have vanished in about 2010 at latest.
- reify 1y agoI love that sound I always create an alias to make that sound and another for the matrix phone sound when I connect to the internet. the sound files are available here: https://www.soundjay.com/dial-up-modem-sound-effect.html https://www.soundjay.com/dial-up-modem-sound-effect.html for the matrix: alias wifion="nmcli dev wifi connect 'wifi-name'" && paplay /path/to/soundfile/matrix-phone.wav for the old dial up tones: alias wifioff="nmcli d disconnect wlp3s0" && /path/to/soundfile/dial-up-modem-02.wav linux has loads of these sounds in /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo
- burnt-resistor 1y agoRemembering that cheap 56K unlimited service and ix.netcom.com personal pages. Shutting down services is what happens when a brand is bought up by private equity. Them and Yahoo are owned by Apollo.
- tech234a 1y agoYou can still get dial-up internet from MSN apparently: https://get.msn.com/ https://get.msn.com/
- mrlonglong 1y agoOver in the UK, our phone lines are about to become 100% digital. Anyone with the old analogue modems now has some rather nice paperweights. I've still got an USR Robotics modem that was originally 14.4k, got upgraded a few times from 33k6 to v92 and an Hayes v92 modem gathering dust in storage.
- CursedSilicon 1y agoDo you mean VoIP? Digital phone lines were a thing and were generally needed to get V.92 ("real" 56K) service instead of 33.6 (V34) service
- mrlonglong 1y agoOh, that's right, I must have conflated it with VoIP. Delighted I can still use modems in an emergency.
- cchance 1y agoThought 1... AOL is still alive? Thought 2... DIALUP IS STILL AROUND?!?!