4 ms·

And imagine if telecom had topped out around ISDN somewhere, with perhaps OC-3 (155Mbps) for the bleeding-fastest network core links. We'd probably get MP3 but

And imagine if telecom had topped out around ISDN somewhere, with perhaps OC-3 (155Mbps) for the bleeding-fastest network core links. We'd probably get MP3 but not video to any great or compelling degree. Mostly-text web, perhaps more gopher-like. Client-side stuff would have to be very compact, I wonder if NAPLPS would've taken off. Screen reader software would probably love that timeline.

iberator 8mo ago
you are wrong. Windows 3.11 era used CPUs with like 33mhz cpu, and yet we had TONS of graphical applications. Including web browsers, Photoshop, CAD, Excel and instant messangers Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT.
- cluckindan 8mo ago
  Not JavaScript. Facebook.
  - j16sdiz 8mo ago
    Netscape 2 support javascript on 16-bit Windows 3.1
- vidarh 8mo ago
  I don't see how this contradicts any of what they said, unless they've edited their comment. You're right we had graphical apps, but we did also have very little video. CuSeeMe existed - video conferencing would've still been a thing, but with limited resolution due to bandwidth constraints. Video in general was an awful low res mess and would have remained so if most people were limited to ISDN speeds. While there were still images on the web, the amount of graphical flourishes were still heavily bandwidth limited. The bandwidth limit they proposed would be a big deal even if CPU speeds continued to increase (it could only mitigate so much with better compression).
  - iberator 8mo ago
    i remember watching adult videos on windows 3.11 with 486dx 100mhz. CD-ROM VIDEO thing. I guess it was just just mpeg2 format
- rbanffy 8mo ago
  > Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript is innocent. The people writing humongous apps with it are the ones to blame. And memory footprint. A 16 MB machine wouldn’t be able to hold the icons an average web app uses today.
  - bitwize 8mo ago
    Netscape was talking about making the Web an app platform to replace Microsoft Windows even way back then. The world we're living in today is exactly what they envisioned.
    - rbanffy 8mo ago
      Electron wouldn’t be possible back then.
      - bitwize 8mo ago
        Electron was effectively invented by Microsoft in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application Which is funny, because HTML, Java, and JavaScript were being talked about as an app platform a few years before then, precisely to prevent Microsoft from drinking everybody's milkshake on the desktop.
phwbikm 8mo ago
I have a Hayes 9600kbps modem for web surfing.
- rbanffy 8mo ago
  “Web surfing” sounds so much healthier than “doom scrolling”…
rm30 8mo ago
I remember when I went from 286 to 486dx2, the difference was impressive, able to run a lot of graphical applications smoothly. Ironically, now I'm using an ESP32-S3, 10x more powerful, just to run Iot devices.
drob518 8mo ago
Depends how pervasive OC3 would have gotten. A 1080p video stream is only about 7 Mbps today.
- fhars 8mo ago
  You only have to bundle about 110 ISDN channels to transfer that (four E1 or five T1 trunk lines).
  - myself248 8mo ago
    Right, but point is, assume the "backbone" never got fast enough to have a million subscribers all doing that at once. I remember a subscriber T1 costing 4 figures per month, and I don't think it's because the copper pairs themselves were any different. (They weren't. As long as they didn't have bridge-taps, it was just plain old pairs. The repeaters every few kilofeet were not that expensive either.) I remember the early-90s internet guidance that idle traffic like keepalive pings was discouraged, especially if you were sending traffic overseas, because it cluttered up the backbone links with packets that weren't actually valuable, and that was rude / abusive. Presumably edge CDNs would've still happened (or, ISPs providing Usenet servers basically did a lot of that already), but you simply wouldn't be doing video over the internet at large because the bandwidth charges would kill you.
    - drob518 8mo ago
      You would still have video happening, but it would not be the type we have today (streaming arbitrary full-length movies from a nearly infinite catalog and YouTube). It would be used for big events and things like that. We might still have gotten podcasting, though.
      - myself248 8mo ago
        Podcasting distributed by NNTP would be so much more efficient than RSS and HTTP, too!
  - drob518 8mo ago
petra 8mo ago
It's probably possible to develop analog adsl chips in 1990 semi tech. But pretty difficult.

iberator 8mo ago

you are wrong. Windows 3.11 era used CPUs with like 33mhz cpu, and yet we had TONS of graphical applications. Including web browsers, Photoshop, CAD, Excel and instant messangers Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT.

cluckindan 8mo ago
Not JavaScript. Facebook.
- j16sdiz 8mo ago
  Netscape 2 support javascript on 16-bit Windows 3.1
vidarh 8mo ago
I don't see how this contradicts any of what they said, unless they've edited their comment. You're right we had graphical apps, but we did also have very little video. CuSeeMe existed - video conferencing would've still been a thing, but with limited resolution due to bandwidth constraints. Video in general was an awful low res mess and would have remained so if most people were limited to ISDN speeds. While there were still images on the web, the amount of graphical flourishes were still heavily bandwidth limited. The bandwidth limit they proposed would be a big deal even if CPU speeds continued to increase (it could only mitigate so much with better compression).
- iberator 8mo ago
  i remember watching adult videos on windows 3.11 with 486dx 100mhz. CD-ROM VIDEO thing. I guess it was just just mpeg2 format
rbanffy 8mo ago
> Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript is innocent. The people writing humongous apps with it are the ones to blame. And memory footprint. A 16 MB machine wouldn’t be able to hold the icons an average web app uses today.
- bitwize 8mo ago
  Netscape was talking about making the Web an app platform to replace Microsoft Windows even way back then. The world we're living in today is exactly what they envisioned.
  - rbanffy 8mo ago
    Electron wouldn’t be possible back then.
    - bitwize 8mo ago
      Electron was effectively invented by Microsoft in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application Which is funny, because HTML, Java, and JavaScript were being talked about as an app platform a few years before then, precisely to prevent Microsoft from drinking everybody's milkshake on the desktop.

phwbikm 8mo ago

I have a Hayes 9600kbps modem for web surfing.

rbanffy 8mo ago
“Web surfing” sounds so much healthier than “doom scrolling”…

rm30 8mo ago

I remember when I went from 286 to 486dx2, the difference was impressive, able to run a lot of graphical applications smoothly. Ironically, now I'm using an ESP32-S3, 10x more powerful, just to run Iot devices.

drob518 8mo ago

Depends how pervasive OC3 would have gotten. A 1080p video stream is only about 7 Mbps today.

fhars 8mo ago
You only have to bundle about 110 ISDN channels to transfer that (four E1 or five T1 trunk lines).
- myself248 8mo ago
  Right, but point is, assume the "backbone" never got fast enough to have a million subscribers all doing that at once. I remember a subscriber T1 costing 4 figures per month, and I don't think it's because the copper pairs themselves were any different. (They weren't. As long as they didn't have bridge-taps, it was just plain old pairs. The repeaters every few kilofeet were not that expensive either.) I remember the early-90s internet guidance that idle traffic like keepalive pings was discouraged, especially if you were sending traffic overseas, because it cluttered up the backbone links with packets that weren't actually valuable, and that was rude / abusive. Presumably edge CDNs would've still happened (or, ISPs providing Usenet servers basically did a lot of that already), but you simply wouldn't be doing video over the internet at large because the bandwidth charges would kill you.
  - drob518 8mo ago
    You would still have video happening, but it would not be the type we have today (streaming arbitrary full-length movies from a nearly infinite catalog and YouTube). It would be used for big events and things like that. We might still have gotten podcasting, though.
    - myself248 8mo ago
      Podcasting distributed by NNTP would be so much more efficient than RSS and HTTP, too!
- drob518 8mo ago

petra 8mo ago

It's probably possible to develop analog adsl chips in 1990 semi tech. But pretty difficult.