New thread for all of our friends still using dial up. Does anyone still use dial up?

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New thread for all of our friends still using dial up. Does anyone still use dial up?

Not me, but it's still around.
Some phone lines are just too long (or too crappy) for broadband.

If people have issues loading the thread, they can set the number of posts per page in their Account settings, Community Preferences. That way they'll only have to wait for those posts to load, not a large chunk of the thread.
I've got it set to 500 messages per page- the only time it's an issue is when the forums/web site are misbehaving.
They can also Hide avatar images, Hide signatures, and Show images as links. Even with my fast connection there are times I consider selecting those options. Some people get just a bit carried away with what they tack on to their posts.

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Grant
Darwin NT

New thread for all of our friends still using dial up. Does anyone still use dial up?

Not me, but it's still around.
Some phone lines are just too long (or too crappy) for broadband.

If people have issues loading the thread, they can set the number of posts per page in their Account settings, Community Preferences. That way they'll only have to wait for those posts to load, not a large chunk of the thread.
I've got it set to 500 messages per page- the only time it's an issue is when the forums/web site are misbehaving.
They can also Hide avatar images, Hide signatures, and Show images as links. Even with my fast connection there are times I consider selecting those options. Some people get just a bit carried away with what they tack on to their posts.

Forum default is to load 75 posts per page. So once the thread is 76 posts long, it might as well be 7000 posts long. The only thread that really needs a refresh it the last person to post thread. All the others could grow without bound.

The photo threads might present a problem on dial up, but set the preference to say 25 posts a page and make sure your browser cache is big enough to hold the photos so they don't have to reload every time you visit the thread. As it pointed out your preferences can control what is loaded by default, and what you have to ask for on purpose.

Oh, and it is usually the signatures that become the issue, when the stats sites go down and each signature has to time out before the page draws.

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Gary are you saying Dull who was once a worm is a problem?

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Gary are you saying Dull who was once a worm is a problem?

No, more like my own signature from bonic stats. If they are down then everyone who uses them is down.

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No, more like my own signature from bonic stats. If they are down then everyone who uses them is down.

Which is just another reason that I have sigs disabled.

Cheers.

Is satellite not available?

Here in Australia it's available in a lot of remote areas, and even with subsidies it costs an arm and a leg & a kidney or 2 for a rather unreliable service with very low data caps. And the big issue with Satellite is latency- for downloading files it's OK. For the average web site, it's extremely slow to excruciatingly slow. For forums such as these it would be intolerable.
And there are plenty of areas that don't get or aren't eligible for satellite, and ADSL just isn't possible, so they have to put up with dial up.
Or like my parents, less than 3km from a telephone exchange in a suburb of Brisbane, and they're lucky if their ADSL2+ connection connects at 3Mb/s (at that distance 17Mb/s should be possible). Sometimes it's less than 300kb/s. And like satellite, really slow ADSL is actually worse than dialup for general surfing.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Welll.....
Not exactly on a dial-up, but here the marina supplied WiFi is slower and patchier than that of many old dial-up lines.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Welll.....
Not exactly on a dial-up, but here the marina supplied WiFi is slower and patchier than that of many old dial-up lines.

The big advantage of dialup & ADSL is the line to the exchange is all yours, no sharing. With WiFi, Satellite & mobile phone data services you have to share the available bandwidth to the nearest access point/satellite/phone tower with everyone else that's using the same service in your area. A couple of people, not doing much. No problem. A few hundred people all trying to stream HDTV while having an ebay shopping frenzy and posting their latest pet & food shots to Instagram and cat videos to YouTube? Not so good.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Testing Pöl Harbour in Gothenburg.

Pöl meaning Pool is pronounced Pearl here:)

I think I would do well to remember the relative sizes of the UK, America, and Australia, I tend to forget that!! Living in the suburbs of London with BT Infinity, my line is capped at 58mb/s download, and 11.26mb/s upload. I am about 1.5 miles from the exchange, but at the very end of an old local loop. The min is 40mb/s the max is 70mb/s.

I remember our dear friend John Clark who went from landline to Satellite in Lincolnshire and quadrupled his download speed overnight and at a reasonable cost. Us city guys take a lot for granted, but having said that it is supposed to be the 21C, so why is so much of the world so behind??

I wonder that too. If my download speed goes above 1mb/s and stays for a than a minute. I'm a happy camper.

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I think I would do well to remember the relative sizes of the UK, America, and Australia, I tend to forget that!! Living in the suburbs of London with BT Infinity, my line is capped at 58mb/s download, and 11.26mb/s upload. I am about 1.5 miles from the exchange, but at the very end of an old local loop. The min is 40mb/s the max is 70mb/s.

I remember our dear friend John Clark who went from landline to Satellite in Lincolnshire and quadrupled his download speed overnight and at a reasonable cost. Us city guys take a lot for granted, but having said that it is supposed to be the 21C, so why is so much of the world so behind??

It's just luck, I live out in the wilds, village population ~800, nearest large town population <15,000. Manchester about 30 miles away. But my download speed is 150MB/s, have measure >160.

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Obviously I don't know who your Internet provider is, but within 30 miles of Manchester, one of the UK's major Cities, 150Mb/s is pretty good I would say, lucky you! Maybe helped with the Government aims to enhance what they see as the "Northern PowerHouse" with HS2.

Long before that. It is all thanks to Nynex (pre 1996), who were taken over by Cable & Wireless, who were taken over by NTL who combined with Bluesomething to become Virgin. It is only in the last year BT have wired their cabinets up. and left wondering why nobody has signed up to their 'Up to 76MB/s for £44.99/month' when Virgin offers 200MB/s for £45/month.

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I think I would do well to remember the relative sizes of the UK, America, and Australia, I tend to forget that!! Living in the suburbs of London with BT Infinity, my line is capped at 58mb/s download, and 11.26mb/s upload. I am about 1.5 miles from the exchange, but at the very end of an old local loop. The min is 40mb/s the max is 70mb/s.

I remember our dear friend John Clark who went from landline to Satellite in Lincolnshire and quadrupled his download speed overnight and at a reasonable cost. Us city guys take a lot for granted, but having said that it is supposed to be the 21C, so why is so much of the world so behind??

I wonder that too. If my download speed goes above 1mb/s and stays for a than a minute. I'm a happy camper.

The minimum internet speed here on Spectrum(ex-TWC) is 30/5, but that is a special speed one has to be able to qualify for that costs $14.99 a month, which is for those who get SSI(65+, the age requirement can be waived, New Customer can not) and are New Customers, Me I get 100/10Mbps since I'm not a New Customer, which at $64.99 is the only speed one can get in this area now, being a New Customer means No Spectrum TV service and Internet for at least 30 days.

And yes I'm working on fixing that, by using My 3G phone as a hotspot for at least 30 days(3G internet is $10 for 1.5GB), I found out that I used 50MB a day, 150MB if I watched some videos, the area is 4G LTE capable on Sprint, but I don't have a 4G LTE phone, just to reduce My bill by about $50 a month.

Landlines out here are not really worth using, Verizon after 2006 didn't maintain them, and now Frontier is trying to fix all that, but has a lot of work to do.

Satellite, meant the possibility of snow on the dish, and the possibility of a lousy install, snow here has happened in the past, no thanks, I'd rather have cable. I don't mind some snow though.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Satellite internet is available in the US. It's never been very popular. It's slow and expensive compared to other options. Here is what is currently available.

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The point about satellite is that if you are that remote that it is simply not a viable proposition to lay physical landlines or cables to your door, then Satellite is the only answer. It's either that or go without!

To the best of my knowledge, most satellite contracts require a landline for the upload half of the comms link. To go full duplex on satellite will be very expensive.

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To the best of my knowledge, most satellite contracts require a landline for the upload half of the comms link. To go full duplex on satellite will be very expensive.

The NBN Sky Muster service here in Australia is for those with no landline or fixed wireless service, and it isn't cheap.
But then neither is a half decent fibre connection.

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Grant
Darwin NT

All new country internet satellite services here down under are full duplex systems as getting a copper line to most of those premises is cost prohibitive.

Cheers.

Is there a map or data on places not connected by BT copper.

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Does satellite internet suffer the same problems with weather as satellite tv? Namely when a heavy cloud passing between you and the satellite causing a blockage in signal?

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