A view on the internet 15 years ago

[Toruk Makto]

Don't knock old school. The only internet access I have at our cabin in Colorado is dialup. I get 4800 baud on a good day because it is at the end of 34 miles of copper and two A/D-D/A conversions.
Fancy web pages are a pain on that hookup.

It may be slow but at least you have sth. With modern technology you wouldn't have a connection even with just half of this distance (actually here you can't get reliable ADSL if you are further away than 1200m from the next telephone switch (those devices responsible for acting as a switch between you and the fibre optical stuff of your provider)

Well there is a digital system made by GoDigital that does this job on copper, even providing IDSL.  In fact about 3/4 of the trunk span to Jasper is on that system, now. Unfortunately, the last 11 miles are still on the old analog CAC8 system that is over 40 years old. The field node in Jasper is solar powered and the guys couldn't figure out the power problem that arose when they tried to put the digital terminal at the end of the cable because of the voltage drop to the repeaters upstream. On the other hand the CAC8 can live with a wide range of supply voltages. Heck, before the solar power was set up, the whole system was powered from the CO on 4 pairs with the head end pushing 350 volts just to get a working dc voltage 41 miles downline. Now THAT is fricken old school!

Oh well. I am happy to have anything at all that far up into the mountains, so I don't complain.

[Toruk Makto]

I should point out that all of the power shinanigans are because Jasper is off grid. Closest electric utility service is 18 miles in the wrong direction. 

[bommel]

heh, there's a reason that everyone that lives outside of the cities have FTTH connections.

Germany is behind when it comes to such technologies - except you live in a larger city but even then you could have places where the connections are worse. For example, I live in a city where you can get 100 Mbit/s over TV cable but unfortunately not in my street

[Swoka Ikran]

heh, there's a reason that everyone that lives outside of the cities have FTTH connections.

Germany is behind when it comes to such technologies - except you live in a larger city but even then you could have places where the connections are worse. For example, I live in a city where you can get 100 Mbit/s over TV cable but unfortunately not in my street

Sounds sort of like where I am, and I'm in the USA. My development has both cable (which I have) and FTTH available, but you can drive a few minutes to a part of town where such service is not offered.

Any clue if they plan to expand the cable service to your street at some point?

[Sіr. Ηaxalot]

heh, there's a reason that everyone that lives outside of the cities have FTTH connections.

Germany is behind when it comes to such technologies - except you live in a larger city but even then you could have places where the connections are worse. For example, I live in a city where you can get 100 Mbit/s over TV cable but unfortunately not in my street

Sounds sort of like where I am, and I'm in the USA. My development has both cable (which I have) and FTTH available, but you can drive a few minutes to a part of town where such service is not offered.

Any clue if they plan to expand the cable service to your street at some point?

Well, if there's true FTTH they need to dig new down fibre in every street. Here it's common in larger cities and on the countryside, but not as common in smaller cities, like the one I'm living in. The main problem would be that it's usually very expensive ti install fibre. For me it would cost ~$1K, but that's still very cheap för a FTTH connection, typically it's about 5x as much so most people doesn't consider it over a DSL connection that is fast enough.

[Swoka Ikran]

Well, if there's true FTTH they need to dig new down fibre in every street. Here it's common in larger cities and on the countryside, but not as common in smaller cities, like the one I'm living in. The main problem would be that it's usually very expensive ti install fibre. For me it would cost ~$1K, but that's still very cheap för a FTTH connection, typically it's about 5x as much so most people doesn't consider it over a DSL connection that is fast enough.

Around here, if you don't have the fiber at the curb already, the company simply refuses to sell you the service. If it's at the curb, the run to your house is free if you get a 2-year contract with them.

Also near me, where fiber isn't offered, cable typically isn't either. 20 minutes from here, there's an area where internet/TV is dish-only, and phone is POTS.

[bommel]

Any clue if they plan to expand the cable service to your street at some point?

I don't know

[Syaron]

The company I worked with for over 35 years had computer systems from the early 80's. Digital VAX systems with slave terminals for data entry. Then they got the early internet which consisted of Newsgroups. Wow! what a blast ! I wasted tons of time on newsgroups. It was awesome. They even had some early games like a Star Trek game that was very much like the old Atari systems "Asteroids". I bought my Commodore 64 in 1985 and thought I was really something with all the peaks and pokes to make little programs. Used a TRS 80 by Tandy in technical school. It actually had tapes that loaded the programs for my electricity classes. Then on to Fortran and punch cards. Punched them on a huge machine at the university, sent by datalink to the main campus 200 miles away then back with a gigantic dot matrix print out that took hours to get only to find I had a bunch of mistakes!

Awwww memories.

[MaTe]

Marki, have you considered getting a dish for incomming traffic? web pages with lot's of pictures will still be ba, but at least you'll get throughput for video streaming.

My first was 14.4(FIDO only), then 56(dialup) for a long time, then I've moved to US and rent of my first appt. included 8Mbit connection %)
Back in russia, in 90s, there was also such thing as "home networks". That's a network that spawned several multi-flat houses with hundreds of users Some of users shared an ADSL. They still exist now - video/music "sharing", multiplayer games are fun when you have 300+ local users online. And a dorm of IT dept had all 13 stories covered in wires even before there was 1 common network in university... eh, good old times.

[bommel]

My first was 14.4(FIDO only), then 56(dialup) for a long time, then I've moved to US and rent of my first appt. included 8Mbit connection %)
Back in russia, in 90s, there was also such thing as "home networks". That's a network that spawned several multi-flat houses with hundreds of users Some of users shared an ADSL. They still exist now - video/music "sharing", multiplayer games are fun when you have 300+ local users online. And a dorm of IT dept had all 13 stories covered in wires even before there was 1 common network in university... eh, good old times.

nice ^^