4 ms·

Nice that instead of completely cutting you off at the cap they put it in super slow 500 kbits. That is actually usable and used to be the fastest speed you cou

by bahmboo 9mo ago

Nice that instead of completely cutting you off at the cap they put it in super slow 500 kbits. That is actually usable and used to be the fastest speed you could get at home.

vidarh 9mo ago
My first company was an ISP, and our selling point was that we had higher bandwith out of Norway than any competitors in our price range.... A whopping 512kps.
- reactordev 9mo ago
  Mmmmm ISDN copper…
  - barbazoo 9mo ago
    If I remember right we could get 64kb/s or 128kb/s if you bundled them, that was in Germany. But also, we didn't have that, we only had a 56kb/s modem and I remember really wanting ISDN when I was a kid :)
    - vardump 9mo ago
      ISDN (IDSL) was max 144 kbit/s. Two 64 kbit/s channels and one 16 kbit/s control channel all bundled together.
      - reactordev 9mo ago
        Or four bonded twin-64kbit channels with a multiplexer. Ahhh, high school…
  - vidarh 9mo ago
    Copper, but not ISDN. Fractional E1 leased line. There were expensive and limited ISDN connections available in Norway at the time ('95), but not cost effective for an ISP.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      I was in Northern Virginia at the time enjoying this new thing called AOL.
- AdamJacobMuller 9mo ago
  I remember being amazingly excited to have saved up enough money to go to the store and buy a 33.6 modem (an amazing upgrade from my 14.4). A year or so later I upgraded to a v.92 only to realize my ISP (I think it was IDT at the time) didn't support that and only supported some other 56k "standard" (details are sketchy on this, I was like 12). I was devastated and it was too late to drive back to computer city to exchange it for the correct one. Now I have 10G symmetric in my house.
jcims 9mo ago
Still with pretty low latency (25-35ms) as well (similar to the Standby (aka pause) state you can put the account into for $5/mo)
- rootusrootus 9mo ago
  The standby account -is- 500 kbps, probably it's the same mode, so I'd expect the same performance. Anecdotally, even though I'd have told you that 500 was probably enough for non-streaming stuff that I do most of the time, in my experience when my connection switches over to Starlink (I have Comcast primarily, but it has had reliability problems the last few months), it usually hits the Starlink limits pretty hard. I've never identified any nefarious activity, it just seems like all the little things on my workstations and various devices that chatter add up to enough to trigger Starlink's controls.
SkyPuncher 9mo ago
That's faster than my cell phone in the areas where I desperately need Starlink....500kb > 0
- TN1ck 9mo ago
  Be aware that it is bits, so 62.5kb. But I agree, the internet is still usable with that.
  - mlyle 9mo ago
    People always use bits for connectivity. 62.5kB/sec -- maybe really 55-60kB/sec downloaded. Or 18 seconds to get a megabyte. This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds). It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
    - volemo 9mo ago
      Is Google homepage consisting of a text input field and like ten buttons really over a megabyte? Damn.
      - mlyle 9mo ago
        I end up transferring 940kB (with a lot of blocking cranked up). Typing "hello" in the search bar takes it up to 1MB. Then the first page of search results is another 1.3MB. Now, I assume all of this would start working before it's all transferred. But we're still talking about tens of seconds of transfer at 500kbit/sec. (And Google at least acts like they care about bandwidth a little. So many 15megabyte pages out there...)
  - namanyayg 9mo ago
    I've never heard bandwidth being expressed in bytes. But if we're being pedantic then I'd like to throw my hat in and call it 62.5kB. Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)
mikestew 9mo ago
No, not nice. Previously, if we exceeded the 50Gb cap, there was the option to continue on at high-speed for $1/Gb. And that's the same price per Gb as the base plan of 50Gb/month for $50. Now, it's either upgrade to unlimited, or enjoy Netflix at 500Kbps. I want the old plan back.
- scottyah 9mo ago
  Now the cap is 100G. Seems like an odd complaint. Did you often exceed 100Gb?
  - mikestew 9mo ago
    It's unlikely that we will exceed 100Gb/month in the camper. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over. In the end, it'll probably work out okay for us, but I liked the previous option of being able to get high-speed data at a reasonable price should we go over the limit.
    - natch 9mo ago
      Fortunately 1. For slow speeds, it’s not like you have to live with that slowness every day. The impact is limited to the remaining few days of the month where you ran up against the 100GB, so the either-or in your statement looks worse than it is; and 2. Starlink makes it dead easy to switch from plan to plan right in the app so you can go right back to a lower plan when the higher one is not needed. With the caveat that they do change what plans are available sometimes as we’re seeing here.
- ralfd 9mo ago
  If I calculate correctly then 500 kbps is actually enough for Netflix in standard quality. If one wants to binge watch 4K (7 GB per hour) then the unlimited plan makes more sense anyway.
- lukevp 9mo ago
  Wait, the price didn’t change though did it? So you get 100 gigs for the price of 50 before?
sib 9mo ago
The first modem that I owned was 1200 baud. The first one that I used was 110 and it was exciting when it was upgraded to 300. It took ~20 years from when I first got online until my home internet reached 512kbps.
- hinkley 9mo ago
  I bought a cheap 1200 and then once I had use for it I saved up for a USR 14.4 with a shiny extruded aluminum case. At one point I was sharing that with two roommates using SLIP and surplussed Cisco coaxial NICs.
doublerabbit 9mo ago
Good enough to play Quake 3 Arena.
Sammi 9mo ago
You might just be able to stream 240p youtube without stuttering with that.
danpalmer 9mo ago
I'd disagree that that is usable today. A few days ago I had some network trouble that restricted me to about 350kbps, although stable without much packet loss, and a lot of stuff just didn't practically work. At that speed, loading images and resources on webpages within timeout limits is hard. Many web apps don't work, or degrade enough that you wouldn't want to use them. Also what do we actually use the web for? A lot of streaming video and audio that won't work. A lot of reading webpages with a lot of images and ads, that won't work. I'm sure that Wikipedia would load and work slowly, but that's not really representative of web usage today. There's a separate argument about whether the web should be like that, but regardless of your thoughts on that, it is like that.
- digiown 9mo ago
  I hope we get LLM browser agents that will convert the web back to that state again. You can get sorta close now with adblockers, various "lite" modes, and unofficial client sites, but it would be nice if it were universal.
  - danpalmer 9mo ago
    This is a separate discussion, but while I agree in general that pages should be less bloated than they are, ads shouldn't burn my CPU, etc, I think it's a sign of progress that the web takes much more bandwidth. 4K video is better than HD, is better than SD, is better than no video. Illustrations improve articles. More client side Javascript tends to mean more interactivity which is often a good thing (not always). The web today does so much more than it did 20 years ago, and we should be proud of that achievement rather than push back on progress by expecting the web to work on a connection from 20 years ago.
- olyjohn 9mo ago
  Set your device to "metered network" and all the background shit will stop running. That's what I had to do to get my Starlink mini working in Standby mode. As soon as your device is on WiFi it thinks it's a free for all and starts updating and downloading shit in the background. The 500KB/sec is more than enough as long as that isn't happening.
gramie 9mo ago
> used to be the fastest speed you could get at home My 1200 baud from 1987 would beg to differ. Granted, that was for bulletin boards, not the WWW (which hadn't been invented yet).

by bahmboo 9mo ago

Nice that instead of completely cutting you off at the cap they put it in super slow 500 kbits. That is actually usable and used to be the fastest speed you could get at home.

vidarh 9mo ago

My first company was an ISP, and our selling point was that we had higher bandwith out of Norway than any competitors in our price range.... A whopping 512kps.

reactordev 9mo ago
Mmmmm ISDN copper…
- barbazoo 9mo ago
  If I remember right we could get 64kb/s or 128kb/s if you bundled them, that was in Germany. But also, we didn't have that, we only had a 56kb/s modem and I remember really wanting ISDN when I was a kid :)
  - vardump 9mo ago
    ISDN (IDSL) was max 144 kbit/s. Two 64 kbit/s channels and one 16 kbit/s control channel all bundled together.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      Or four bonded twin-64kbit channels with a multiplexer. Ahhh, high school…
- vidarh 9mo ago
  Copper, but not ISDN. Fractional E1 leased line. There were expensive and limited ISDN connections available in Norway at the time ('95), but not cost effective for an ISP.
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    I was in Northern Virginia at the time enjoying this new thing called AOL.
AdamJacobMuller 9mo ago
I remember being amazingly excited to have saved up enough money to go to the store and buy a 33.6 modem (an amazing upgrade from my 14.4). A year or so later I upgraded to a v.92 only to realize my ISP (I think it was IDT at the time) didn't support that and only supported some other 56k "standard" (details are sketchy on this, I was like 12). I was devastated and it was too late to drive back to computer city to exchange it for the correct one. Now I have 10G symmetric in my house.

jcims 9mo ago

Still with pretty low latency (25-35ms) as well (similar to the Standby (aka pause) state you can put the account into for $5/mo)

rootusrootus 9mo ago
The standby account -is- 500 kbps, probably it's the same mode, so I'd expect the same performance. Anecdotally, even though I'd have told you that 500 was probably enough for non-streaming stuff that I do most of the time, in my experience when my connection switches over to Starlink (I have Comcast primarily, but it has had reliability problems the last few months), it usually hits the Starlink limits pretty hard. I've never identified any nefarious activity, it just seems like all the little things on my workstations and various devices that chatter add up to enough to trigger Starlink's controls.

SkyPuncher 9mo ago

That's faster than my cell phone in the areas where I desperately need Starlink....500kb > 0

TN1ck 9mo ago
Be aware that it is bits, so 62.5kb. But I agree, the internet is still usable with that.
- mlyle 9mo ago
  People always use bits for connectivity. 62.5kB/sec -- maybe really 55-60kB/sec downloaded. Or 18 seconds to get a megabyte. This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds). It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
  - volemo 9mo ago
    Is Google homepage consisting of a text input field and like ten buttons really over a megabyte? Damn.
    - mlyle 9mo ago
      I end up transferring 940kB (with a lot of blocking cranked up). Typing "hello" in the search bar takes it up to 1MB. Then the first page of search results is another 1.3MB. Now, I assume all of this would start working before it's all transferred. But we're still talking about tens of seconds of transfer at 500kbit/sec. (And Google at least acts like they care about bandwidth a little. So many 15megabyte pages out there...)
- namanyayg 9mo ago
  I've never heard bandwidth being expressed in bytes. But if we're being pedantic then I'd like to throw my hat in and call it 62.5kB. Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)

mikestew 9mo ago

No, not nice. Previously, if we exceeded the 50Gb cap, there was the option to continue on at high-speed for $1/Gb. And that's the same price per Gb as the base plan of 50Gb/month for $50. Now, it's either upgrade to unlimited, or enjoy Netflix at 500Kbps. I want the old plan back.

scottyah 9mo ago
Now the cap is 100G. Seems like an odd complaint. Did you often exceed 100Gb?
- mikestew 9mo ago
  It's unlikely that we will exceed 100Gb/month in the camper. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over. In the end, it'll probably work out okay for us, but I liked the previous option of being able to get high-speed data at a reasonable price should we go over the limit.
  - natch 9mo ago
    Fortunately 1. For slow speeds, it’s not like you have to live with that slowness every day. The impact is limited to the remaining few days of the month where you ran up against the 100GB, so the either-or in your statement looks worse than it is; and 2. Starlink makes it dead easy to switch from plan to plan right in the app so you can go right back to a lower plan when the higher one is not needed. With the caveat that they do change what plans are available sometimes as we’re seeing here.
ralfd 9mo ago
If I calculate correctly then 500 kbps is actually enough for Netflix in standard quality. If one wants to binge watch 4K (7 GB per hour) then the unlimited plan makes more sense anyway.
lukevp 9mo ago
Wait, the price didn’t change though did it? So you get 100 gigs for the price of 50 before?

sib 9mo ago

The first modem that I owned was 1200 baud. The first one that I used was 110 and it was exciting when it was upgraded to 300. It took ~20 years from when I first got online until my home internet reached 512kbps.

hinkley 9mo ago
I bought a cheap 1200 and then once I had use for it I saved up for a USR 14.4 with a shiny extruded aluminum case. At one point I was sharing that with two roommates using SLIP and surplussed Cisco coaxial NICs.

doublerabbit 9mo ago

Good enough to play Quake 3 Arena.

Sammi 9mo ago

You might just be able to stream 240p youtube without stuttering with that.

danpalmer 9mo ago

I'd disagree that that is usable today. A few days ago I had some network trouble that restricted me to about 350kbps, although stable without much packet loss, and a lot of stuff just didn't practically work. At that speed, loading images and resources on webpages within timeout limits is hard. Many web apps don't work, or degrade enough that you wouldn't want to use them. Also what do we actually use the web for? A lot of streaming video and audio that won't work. A lot of reading webpages with a lot of images and ads, that won't work. I'm sure that Wikipedia would load and work slowly, but that's not really representative of web usage today. There's a separate argument about whether the web should be like that, but regardless of your thoughts on that, it is like that.

digiown 9mo ago
I hope we get LLM browser agents that will convert the web back to that state again. You can get sorta close now with adblockers, various "lite" modes, and unofficial client sites, but it would be nice if it were universal.
- danpalmer 9mo ago
  This is a separate discussion, but while I agree in general that pages should be less bloated than they are, ads shouldn't burn my CPU, etc, I think it's a sign of progress that the web takes much more bandwidth. 4K video is better than HD, is better than SD, is better than no video. Illustrations improve articles. More client side Javascript tends to mean more interactivity which is often a good thing (not always). The web today does so much more than it did 20 years ago, and we should be proud of that achievement rather than push back on progress by expecting the web to work on a connection from 20 years ago.
olyjohn 9mo ago
Set your device to "metered network" and all the background shit will stop running. That's what I had to do to get my Starlink mini working in Standby mode. As soon as your device is on WiFi it thinks it's a free for all and starts updating and downloading shit in the background. The 500KB/sec is more than enough as long as that isn't happening.

gramie 9mo ago

> used to be the fastest speed you could get at home My 1200 baud from 1987 would beg to differ. Granted, that was for bulletin boards, not the WWW (which hadn't been invented yet).