Dial-up Internet

~ the eulogy ~

dial-up internet was how most of the world first got online. you had a modem connected to your phone line. your computer dialed a phone number. the modem at the other end picked up. the two modems sang at each other for thirty seconds, negotiating a connection speed. then you were online.

i got online in 1998 with a 14.4k modem my dad bought through a friend. the isp was small, called something like superonline or turknet, i had to look up the local dial-in number on a printed sheet. you paid the isp a monthly fee, plus the phone company billed you per minute of phone use. so you logged on, did what you needed to do, and logged off. the meter was running.

the 14.4k modem became a 33.6k modem a year later. then in 1999 or 2000, a 56k modem. each upgrade felt enormous. the first time i could download an mp3 in three minutes instead of ten was a small revelation. by 2002 my family had switched to ADSL and dial-up was already starting to feel old.

~ the dossier ~

~ the handshake ~

the modem handshake is one of the most recognizable sounds of the early internet. the modem dialed the number (you could hear the touch tones). the remote modem answered with a tone. then a sequence of squeals, hisses, and weird musical buzzes that lasted about 25 to 35 seconds while the two modems negotiated the connection. then silence, and you were on.

each part of that handshake meant something. the initial tone was carrier detection. the squeals were modulation negotiation. the buzz at the end was line-quality calibration. modem nerds could listen to the handshake and tell you what speed the modem had negotiated by ear. most people just heard a robot song that meant the internet was about to work.

this sound is now part of the universal internet folk memory. anyone who got online before about 2003 can imitate it. it shows up in tv shows whenever the script wants to signal "old internet." younger people have learned to recognize it from those references even though they have never heard a real modem dial.

~ phone-line wars ~

dial-up used your phone line. while you were online, your phone was busy. people calling you got a busy signal. somebody in your house picking up the phone disconnected your internet.

this caused real arguments in real households. mums and dads in 2000 did not always understand that the strange singing sound from the back room meant their teenage son was on the internet. they would pick up the phone to call somebody. the modem would drop the connection. the download in progress would die. the kid would yell. the parent would be confused. there is a specific kind of household memory from this era that almost everyone over 35 has.

my mum once unplugged the modem cable mid-download because she was waiting for an important call. the call came an hour later. by then i had lost a 6MB download that had been about 80% complete. i remember being furious in the way only a teenager can be furious about something that does not actually matter.

~ pay by the hour ~

in many countries, including turkey, dial-up was billed by the minute or by the hour for the phone-line use, on top of whatever the isp charged. you watched the clock. you logged on with a plan. you would queue up everything you wanted to do, log on, do it all, and log off. you did not browse aimlessly. that was a luxury.

some isps offered "free internet at night" packages. you would set your alarm for 2am to download a file. you would let the computer go all night downloading a single 50MB game demo. in the morning the file would be there, or it would have failed at 90% because the connection dropped, in which case you would have to start over the next night.

the experience changed how people thought about bandwidth. nothing was free. every kilobyte cost real money. you did not stream video. you barely streamed audio. mostly you read text, downloaded mp3s overnight, and used messengers (which were tiny). the whole shape of online life was different because the meter was running.

~ the curtain ~

ADSL spread through most developed markets between 2001 and 2005. cable internet did the same in the same window. by 2005 most urban households in europe, north america, and east asia had broadband. dial-up survived in rural areas and in developing markets for several more years.

AOL was famously the last big dial-up holdout in the US. they kept charging dial-up subscribers monthly fees long after most of those subscribers could have switched to broadband. some of them did not switch because they did not know how, or because they had a flat rate they liked, or because they only used the internet rarely. AOL was finally bought by verizon in 2015 and verizon retired the dial-up service entirely in 2017. there were still around two million paying dial-up customers when verizon turned it off.

~ what we lost ~

the discipline of finite use. dial-up made you plan. you could not idly browse for hours because every hour cost money. you knew exactly what you wanted to do online when you logged on. you logged off when you were done. the always-on always-everywhere internet is more convenient and a worse training environment for actually getting things done.

the gravity of downloads. when an mp3 took ten minutes to download, you were committed to it before you even heard it. you would not delete it lightly. you had earned it. modern files have no weight because they have no cost. nobody curates a music library the way they did when each song took ten minutes to acquire.

the handshake sound. nothing in modern internet has the same audio signal of "the internet is starting now." wifi is silent. mobile data is silent. you do not have a moment of "the connection has been made." you are just always online, all the time, with no ceremony.

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