27 Mar
2007
27 Mar
'07
1:05 a.m.
On 26/03/07, Roger Merchberger <zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com> wrote:
When I last moved (5 years ago), I went from a place that then (and now)
had at best 48K modem connections; usually worse, and nothing faster... and
[..]
ISDN was available at the new place (and was the
fastest available at the
time) and just having a line that _always_ gave me 64K up & down (and could
pair them for 128K as necessary) made multiple Telnet/SSH sessions a
breeze... (and Diablo II was quite happy as well)... at $62/month.
~10 years ago we used to set up internet access in very small)
businesses with little d-link analogue routers - 33.6Kbps downstream,
if they were lucky. At least "flat rate" charging on the phone calls
had just come in - a few customers had had very nasty surprises with
chargeable calls when /quarterly/ phone bills had come in and they
discovered employees leaving PCs running radio streams on all day., or
backgrounded web pages with refresing adverts, or just windows.. and
the connection time was abysmal going from idle to connected, on
analogue, especially when you were at the other side of the building
and couldn't hear the modem dialing..
When we started putting in ISDN, it was a world of difference.
Reliable, quick (64 or 128K), instant connections.. even good enough
to leave online and support SMTP email... Only slowed down when ~30
people decided to browse the net at lunchtime all at once..
BT have pretty much discontinued ISDN2 over here now. With most of
the population able to have ADSL in some form, they see little demand.
What ADSL doesn't do well, of course, is point to point links, being
aimed squarely at internet access! We had more than one customer use
ISDN directly between sites for linking their networks. Migrating
these to VPNs via the internet was certanly possible, but whilst it
increased the bandwidth, they were certainly not as responsive or as
reliable.
Rob