LIFE AT DIAL-UP SPEED
Post by Syrinx 


The Internet of the mid 90s is often romanticized in similar manner to the 
american old west. The freedom from monopolistic corporations, a greater 
degree of user control, the millions of AOL CDs and floppies. It was a new 
frontier, explored by brave adventurers, hopping by hyperlink from site to 
site. Simple HTML rendered on a flickering cathode ray tube display was 
magical. If this view is to be trusted, it was the true golden age of the 
Internet.

The most common negative side of this technological utopia, as seen 
through the lens of today, was the speed. The most advanced modems of the 
time had a theoretical upper limit of 56 Kbps (7 kilobytes per second.) 
Typically, it would be between 40 and 50 Kbps, depending on factors like 
location and hardware quality. There are still some people who use 
dial-up, whether it be forced upon them by their rural location or they 
just have no need for anything more. I, for one had AOL dial-up well into 
the 2000s due to there being no reasonable alternatives where I lived.

By the standards of today, the bandwidth offered by dial-up is minuscule, 
but is it enough for a techie in the 21st century? I genuinely have no 
idea, as the utility I am going to use for this experiment is compiling as 
I type this. Because of modern website design trends, it will take 
significantly longer to load anything than on any kind of modern 
connection. Thanks to *socialMedia(api)Library2.0Integration.js, more 
bandwidth than ever is required to load sites in a reasonable amount of 
time. For the purposes of this experiment, I will be using the browser 
extension uBlock Origin to slim down sites and make them more fit for 
limited connections. While it is mainly shown as an ad blocker, the 
extension can be used to block anything.

The Results:

Basic sites still load at an acceptable rate, being on par with what I 
remember. The limitations really start to show while trying to visit more 
complex pages. Accessing the home page of the local newspaper took so long 
that I had time to make a cup of tea before all assets had been downloaded 
and rendered. Obviously, this is far from ideal. After using uBlock, I was 
able to significantly reduce this time by preventing the download of large 
images and other unnecessary parts of the page. This improved performance 
across the board, though it was still far from high speed.

Final Thoughts:

Despite the difficulties of a slow connection, I truly enjoyed this little 
window into the past. With a limited connection, I ended up wasting far 
less time and was able to get much more done in a day. If you have time to 
clean the kitchen while a video buffers, it is easy to get motivated to do 
just that. While I do not plan to implement these bandwidth limits on a 
regular basis, it was enjoyable to gain some insight into just how heavy 
modern web technologies are and get stuff done in the process.