Comment by chasd00
1 day ago
my earliest recollection was 14.4 then came 28.8 then 33.3 and finally 56kbps. In college, mide-late 90s, if we wanted Inet access from our dorm we had to use dial-up but if we went to the lab we could get on the T1 (1.5mbps) which i think was shared with the whole campus. iirc my campus connected to UT-Austin and then they had a T3 (45mbps) to the Internet. ..something like that
Heh, some great memories using the T1 line at the school. In the wild west days we Napster'ed at extreme speeds before someone narked us out 8-)
My friend would queue up downloads on his laptop before 1st period, leave the laptop plugged in, sitting in a desk drawer, and pick it up at the end of the day. He had a CD burner, and if we gave him blank media he would burn us his current collection, alphabetized by artist. I still have one CD from that (labeled "Chris Rock" to "Gravity Kills"), that might be the most 1990s thing I own.
We intercepted the unencrypted microwave link between campuses, and basked in full ISDN glory.
They never did figure out where all their bandwidth was going, although the boarding house festooned with cat4 was suspicious. They came and snipped some more conspicuous cables, which were of course immediately spliced back together.
They tried to shut the internet down overnight in response, but their DNS level block was a mere roadbump, and in the end they got another ISDN line… which was immediately put to use in the downstairs kitchen VCD factory. Put the Hong Kong kids out of business, as with them you’d have to wait until next term, with us you got your warez tomorrow, with a fried breakfast.