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https://www.10stripe.com/articles/why-is-56k-the-fastest-dialup-modem-speed.php
If you've ever had dialup internet service, or still do, or just know someone that does, you have probably heard terms like "56k modem". "56k" has become almost synonymous with dialup Internet access. But it's such an arbitrary number. It's not divisible by ten, it's not a power of two... so why was it chosen as the fastest dialup speed? For the answer, we will have to travel back in time quite a while.
Our visitors from Google should be warned that this is not a "stripped down" explanation; it is intended for relatively technical readers. But if you really want to know where this magic number comes from, you need to understand some of the technical background. As we shall see, "56k" was not just pulled out of a hat.
[...] Anyone that has ever used a dialup modem knows full well that they don't actually get to connect at that speed, though. And that their connection speed varies each time they dial in. There are two factors at work here.
The first is the FCC. If you are in the United States, the FCC places a restriction on the power output of devices connected to the phone network. The result is that you will never be able to connect at a speed faster than 53.3 kbit/s.
The second is the overall complexity of the phone network. 56 kbit/s (or 53.3 kbit/s) requires very good operating conditions, as it is really operating beyond the paramaters of what the phone network is required to be capable of. Operating at these speeds requires that there only be one ADC between the user and their ISP (which is not guaranteed to be true, but typically is), and that the copper wiring in the user's "local loop" have very good electrical properties. Part of the dialup process that is used to initiate a connection is an evaluation of the overall quality of the connection; if it is determined to be lacking, the modem will automatically drop down to a lower data rate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday November 20 2023, @11:22PM (28 children)
I was literally in support for a year or two during the 56k dial-up era, and I don't think I ever had a customer report a 56k connect, and I know I never saw one in real life. You were lucky to get something like 44k, 46k, etc. I'm sure *somebody* got one in the lab, maybe even in some area with remarkable clear phone lines? I just know I never saw one. It could be that those people lived in some kind of magic bubble where they never had to call support for anything; but modems are just one aspect of it. If your browser is having issues, you won't mention your 56k connect so there's a reporting bias there. Still though, you'd think I'd have seen one or known some people that actually got one. Nobody did.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Troll) by vux984 on Monday November 20 2023, @11:55PM (21 children)
I saw 56k connections; fairly reliably between pairs of US Robotics Courier v.92 physical external modems. We used them to link our branches together in a hub+spoke topology in a city-area-network in the mid-late 90s. By the 00s we'd migrated to internet links on ADSL.
These guys (link below for image) I seem to recall they were very expensive at the time to; hundreds of dollars each.
https://businesswalls.blogspot.com/2020/09/us-robotics-courier-56k-v-92-business.html [blogspot.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @01:48AM (15 children)
Bullshit. No! Wrong!! Nuh-uh, no you didn't!
I don't know if you're just mis-remembering or simply don't know what you're talking about.
If you were using analog Courier V.Everything modems, the ones with the RED lights, you were getting, at most, 33.6k symmetrical connections.
You cannot do anything above 33.6k without one side being digital. If you were using USR I-Modems (aka 3com Viper) (GREEN lights) on each end, you would be getting 64K per B channel on your ISDN connection. If you had an I-Modem/Viper on one end (ISDN) you would potentially be able to get up to 53.3k over the phone system FROM the digital end TO the analog end with the Courier on it.
No, you didn't. Not at 56K, with analog Couriers, you didn't. That's NOT a THING.
The best I ever got on an analog Courier was CONNECT 54666/ARQ/V92 and checking the link status on ATI11 after dropping out with a +++, the backchannel was at various speeds from about 31200 all the way up to 44000 using V.PCM-Upstream depending on my test conditions.
That was during testing of a couple of Vonage VOIP boxes (Linksys) when they opened up to Canada in 2005 or 2006 or so, accomplished by dialing into my ISDN system at the office (either the 3com RAS1500 or one of my USR Total Control MP/8 or /16, I dont' remember what line I was calling) because it was NOT limited by the FCC transmit power over POTS line limit, since the "downstream" signal was being generated by the VOIP box locally at the analog end.
Vonage to Vonage I don't think I ever got over 31200/31200 or maybe 33600/31200, it was actually slower than on a true analog POTS line, I don't think I could even get it to do 33600/33600, and certainly not anything using the V.PCM stuff without one side being digital.
Bollocks. I call *BOLLOCKS* on you! 🙄
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday November 21 2023, @02:46AM (4 children)
Ooo! Ooo! Teach, I got this one! What happens if he's not doing a symmetrical connection? Say a pair communicating one way and a second pair communicating the other?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @02:57AM (3 children)
You still only get 33.6k. 🙄 Are you being obtuse and khallow?
The fact that you're using a phone line capable of full duplex communication in half duplex mode by only ever talking from one side doesn't make the other, utilized direction any faster. 🙄
My old Codex 9600 bps modems used separate pairs for TX/RX, but that's point-to-point leased line equipment, not the dial-up POTS. That was late 70s tech, though.
They DID have built-in 4-way multiplexers with four DB-25 connectors on the back, with a rotary knobs on the front to select how you split your 9600 bps amongst the ports. Fancy!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:24AM (2 children)
The V.34 mode [wikipedia.org] would have the speeds you stated you achieved, if I read that article right:
(Score: 2, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:42AM (1 child)
No, it is not. That is not a thing.
How do you propose said speeds could be achieved on two USR Courier V.Everything modems on analog POTS lines?! 🙄
The Wikipedia article is wrong. SPORTSTER modems could be purchased with the necessary hardware to do 56k, but not capable of 56k out of the box. Many of them weren't intentionally hobbled, the early ones were pre-V.90 spec and were FREE to upgrade, then later any ones intentionally purchased as 33.6k-only models could still always be field upgraded to 56k, the TI DSP hardware was cheap and they always had the physical capability, just the firmware had to be updated. The physical hardware was the same between models except the ones that were voice / no voice (had the audio jacks on them or not.)
ALL Courier models are fully upgradeable within the limitations of the physical hardware model capabilities. There was never any 33.6k-only Courier that wasn't just a free download away from being 56k. (or 14.4 -> 16.8 or whatever)
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @05:26AM
Actually, that might not be totally wrong on the Courier upgrades, if someone had an early 28.8 or 33.6k Courier and DIDN'T take advantage of the free upgrade to X2 offer, I think USR probably did the charged upgrade thing to go to a 56K standard (X2 or later V.90) but I think once you had one at X2 it was free to add V.90 and later, at least back in the day. Who knows, USR has been sold multiple times now, no idea what they would try to charge for an upgrade file on an ancient model today HAHA
I know I never had to actually pay anything to upgrade any of my Couriers but that WAS like 20 years ago now. They still sold them until fairly recently, now I think there's just one generic Sportster V.92 model still produced for the traditional serial interface, basically just as replacements in legacy systems I would suppose...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday November 21 2023, @02:48AM (4 children)
You obviously have a different knowledge base, but... the 33.6k USR (a real USR) had a update to v.92 and those would indeed do 56k, or very close to it. Lived on dialup from 1993 to 2008 or so, and aside from what the modem reported I regularly ran speed tests, and when I was on a good near-town phone line that v.92 always got very close to 56k. When I moved out to rural telephone shitland, then the same modem only got 26k.
I still have a bunch of those modems around here somewhere, but no longer have the phone line. So I guess their current speed is 0k.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @03:52AM (3 children)
You were obviously dialing into a digital system from your analog POTS line... So yes, you could do up to 53,333k from their (digital) end downstream to your analog end. Upstream from you was probably analog (31200 max, recommendation V.90) or possibly up to a theoretical 48000 if you were in recommendation V.92 mode on the upstream, so your modem was sending raw PCM back, essentially trying to act like a digital ISDN connection bandwidth wise, but that only works when you're direct to the CO and physically close, the 64k channel at the CO end still has to "see" what your modem is sending, accurately.
If you tried dialing up another line in your house or your neighbor or whatever from your analog telephone line, to their analog telephone line instead of an ISDN or other digital line at some CO head-end equipment or whatever, you would only get 33600.
Go ahead and try it. Grab two V.90/V.92 modems connected to your (whatever local terminal devices') serial ports, connect them together with a phone cord, type ATA on one modem, and ATD on the other and see what it says it connects at. You WILL get a CONNECT 33600/ARQ. You cannot get digital speeds between two analog Couriers.
In theory, someone with a disassembly of a recent enough firmware could perhaps somehow hack the firmware to allow a back-to-back local connection in V.PCM-Upstream mode or something to get maybe 48000/48000, but if you're going to really hack the firmware for a back-to-back modem connection, why not just trick the software in the TI DSP chipset into doing some way higher frequencies and speeds... That could be a new electro-sport, I suppose... Pimp the COURIER! You could probably easily get whatever data rate the UART in the modem is capable of, maybe 230,400? I know the stock firmware on mine are all limited to 115,200 but I think the chips can probably do at least 230,400 and one could possibly bodge in one of those ones that does up to 1-1.5 MHz bitrates, though you'd have to replace the stock TI DSP with a faster part, and possibly overclock the '186.... Or 80188 or whatever it is in there. 188 I think. Again, I digress... :)
My sympathies.
I guess I'm lucky, I had at least 1.5 mbps to the office by 94 and at home by 98 without extraneous effort or expense.
Right. You were able to get connected to a digitally-connected remote end in digital mode when you were near town. Once you got too far away, you could only get a regular analog-both-ways connection. When the remote end is able to generate a full 64k signal at the CO end with nothing between there and your modem except a (relatively) short piece of wire, it can generate signals that simply cannot be generated on an analog-analog-only connection within the system as it has to be digitized by an ADC. The DAC on the output can precisely generate things all the way up the available 64k-bitwise spectrum.
Your slow speed had nothing to do with your modem itself, it's limitations of the physical connection infrastructure of your telco provider. You must be one-hop digital to the CO to expect "56k class" connections.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:43AM
Yeah, I have no idea what I was dialing into -- for the ISP, whatever was on Earthlink's end, but it was probably the latest and greatest. However, I got the same speed dialing into the more modern BBSs... so that would have still depended on the phone line, right? (Some of the little hole-in-the-wall BBSs didn't max out the old 14.4.)
I may dig up a couple modems and see if I can get them to talk, just for shits and giggles. The things we do for science... :) Not something I ever had reason to do. Perhaps nothing any sane man has reason to do. :O
The phone line where I got the shit speeds was some hideous routing. It had a giant loop that went several miles out of the way (per the guy at GTE, er, Verizon who tried in vain to fix it). WAAAAY out of range for even the poorest DSL. Eventually was able to get fixed wireless, but it maxed out at 1.5Mbps, cut out under anything less than perfect conditions, and after a couple years decided it could only do 300k (I stopped paying, it kept working at that unspeed, I guess everyone was happy??)
In the present, my rural DSL supposedly can do 7 unstable, was doing 5.125 very stable for several years, but a year ago dropped to a spotty 3 with lots of dropout (which given today's web bloat, is slower than dialup was in its heyday) and no amount of complaining or resets by the tech fixes it for very long. "It's all working" but something died somewhere. Think it's gonna be back to fixed wireless, tho hopefully with better results this time.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday November 21 2023, @10:48AM
Guys,
you could read the V.92 standard. It is freely available. As is the V.90 standard it updates.
ITU-T: V.90 : A digital modem and analogue modem pair for use on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) at data signalling rates of up to 56 000 bit/s downstream and up to 33 600 bit/s upstream [itu.int]
ITU-T: V.92 : Enhancements to Recommendation V.90 [itu.int]
If the service provider was connected to the PSTN with a digital connection (ISDN or T- or E- carrier), then that end is a 'digital modem', and you can rely on the least significant bits of pulse-code modulation encoded signal being correct. This gives you a full 56 knit/s of capacity. The main reason it is 56 kbit/s and not 64 kbit/s is that fact that the PSTN in North America uses/used 'robbed-bit' signalling [wikipedia.org], that used the least-significant bit of a PCM encoded channel for in-band signalling (this is an oversimplification, but it'll do),
If your modem was connected to an analogue line (which it would be), then there was a conversion at the service provider using a modem/codec/DSP that sampled the incoming signal on the analogue line 8000 times a second and encoded it using pulse-code modulation (PCM [wikipedia.org]) in an 8-bit value, giving you a data rate of 64000 bits per second; otherwise written as 64 kilobits per second or a '64k channel'. It isn't a linear encoding, North America and Japan using a mapping function (compander) called 'µ-law' [wikipedia.org] ('meuw-law') and the rest of the world using 'a-law' [wikipedia.org] (using the wrong companding function on companded data caused a noticeable drop in quality).
The FCC set a maximum power to be used on analogue phone lines in the USA in order to limit the effects of crosstalk between circuits, and that constraint reduces the set of points in the modulation constellation that can be used (certain combinations exceed the power levels), which means that fewer symbols can be used to carry the data*.
More background: Electronic Products: The standards behind V.90 and ADSL modems [electronicproducts.com]
More (mathematical details here: PDF: Voiceband modems and DSLs [nycu.edu.tw].
ADSL uses analogue POTS lines, but gets higher data rates because it operates at higher frequencies over the distance between the DSLAM and the end-ADSL modem. Also, many modems had data compression, so could get better effective throughput on compressible data.
Yes, I used to work in the industry, and have accumulated a lot of (now useless) knowledge. I didn't have to deal with understanding the mathematics behind convolutional and trellis codes: I 'just' used the products. And T-carriers, and E-carriers. And...
Now I'm just a dinosaur.
*A simple example - assume you have a signalling system that uses two tones Low and High. Each tone can be off or full power. The possible combinations that can be sent down the wire simultaneously are: Both off, one on, the other on, and both on. If there is a restriction on the maximum total power that can be sent, then you can't use the 'both on' combination, so you can use only three symbols (off,off), (off, on), and (on, off) because (on,on) is disallowed. Being able to use only three symbols instead of four cuts your data rate. The trellis code [wikipedia.org] used for V.92 has more possibilities, but some of the combinations would send too much power down the line, so can't be used in the USA, cutting the data rate.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2023, @03:03PM
Note that just using a phone cord to connect two modems probably won't work. You will need to simulate the off hook condition by providing an approximately 20mA current source in series with the phone line (a battery and a resistor in series will do).
Also ATX3 (I think) to disable dial tone detection on the dialing modem, as you obviously won't have a dial tone in this setup.
When I tried this myself (with two USR modems) it was a bit finicky, I had to sequence the dial and answer commands properly (sending ATA only after the dialing modem had finished dialing), otherwise the modems ended up just screaming at each other without actually connecting.
But indeed, you will only ever get 33.6K with two analog modems.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Mykl on Tuesday November 21 2023, @06:13AM (2 children)
Your hostile, acerbic tone of superiority turns me on.
Call me.
(Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @03:23PM
I'm think I'm free tonight if you feel the need for a good spanking. 😏
(Though, to be fair, I should have put some sort of a smirky face after the nuh-uh, nah no nope, oh no you diddnnnnt! line.... or some sort of a zorro sign or something... 😃 Tongue in cheek.)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:08PM
First, what data rate does your phone line support?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday November 22 2023, @12:46AM
/shrug; it was 25+ years ago; I'm likely mis-remembering a few details. I accept your correction.
Not that I expect it makes any difference, but this was in Canada. I do definitely remember reliably getting more than 33.6 on them though - at least at some point in their life. I also recall doing the v.92 or some other upgrade on them too.
And I definitely recall that we started with the modems paired in hub-spoke; with one spoke connected outwards one more time (due to the long distance zoning -- it was a long distance call from the furthest branch to head office, but everything was local if we did that hop); we were using Apple SE30s doing Appletalk routing over the modem pairs at the start.
But it IS possible they never got above 33.6 though in that original configuration, I really don't recall.
Its entirely likely switched to dialup internet; instead of direct dialing from one to the other; before moving to ADSL, which would have opened up the likelihood that the ISP side was digital for a time.
Eventually they'd all been retired in favor of ADSL.; although I recall ADSL took forever to be available at one site, so we went with ISDN there for several years.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 22 2023, @07:10AM
Yup, definitely saw 56k connections. The customer paid for a 56k modem so the connection said 56k, and the customer saw a 56k connection.
Now whether they actually experienced a 56k connection is another matter entirely. The strategy worked in The Marching Morons, why shouldn't it work in IT?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:48AM
Moderating fantasy as +1 Informative and my factual posts as -1 Flamebait doesn't make my facts less true, or the lies that two analog Couriers can do 56k between each other less of a fantasy. 🙄
Video, or it didn't happen!!
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:44PM (3 children)
I didn't read TFS, otherwise I would have seen the note about full power. We did get some 53.3s, so yes, some got what the system allowed. I guess I'll take that Troll mod like a man, even though it was really -1 Careless.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:25PM
The -1 Troll mod wasn't from me, by the way...
I modded you 0 Disagree :)
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:36PM (1 child)
Wait, you're not vux984, where did you get modded down?
I modded vux984's post 0 Disagree.
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Tuesday November 21 2023, @11:27PM
I have no idea. I could *swear* I saw the Troll mod on my post but now I don't. I'm questioning my sanity, but it never hurts to question Soylent's code. Seriously though, if i blanked on the summary maybe I blanked on that. Maybe the whole topic has become a black hole of cognitive failure and I should say nothing more, LOL.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Tuesday November 21 2023, @12:21AM (2 children)
Was there a sort of gov't regulation like that going on? That's one of those things I feel like I should have heard about if it were true. I also wonder if maybe he misread what one of the limits were and assumed (or was told...) it was a regulatory thing. I remember that being about data compression though, not signal intensity. You might do better data rates when chatting on IRC but downloading a zip file would never go above 28.8... or something like that.
I do not miss the modem days. At all. Period.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:11AM (1 child)
Your family member is mostly correct. The government wasn't regulating the modems at the customer end, rather the FCC restricted the outputs on the line from the CO equipment (radiated power limitations or somesuch for some reason) so that the modems, as designed, could never reach the theoretical maximum speed of the communication standard.
The limits imposed by the FCC did indeed mean that you could never actually get more than 53333 in the field.
Not true. I could routinely get 50666, 52000 and 53333 downstream, 31200 up. Reliably. Canadian phone systems perhaps tended to be better on average than most in the US, though.
Most of my digital stuff was V.90 maximum, I don't think they even ever had any V.92 firmware for the TCs, so I never really attempted to play with V.PCM-Upstream much...
Everything was going DSL, dry copper leased lines were available cheap (like $9/mo with the right contracts) and by that point and I had bought a whole room full of used Paradyne 7mbps/1mbps DSL gear so dial-up was pretty much moot very quickly.
Yes. It is true. It was the FCC, but it wasn't some sort of grand conspiracy. The tech from the modem people was simply theoretically more potent than the FCC regs currently allow.
Your family member probably still wears a tinfoil hat, but likely without cause on this one, I suppose.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday November 21 2023, @11:11AM
I believe it was to minimize/mitigate crosstalk. There are some standards for the number of twists per foot for unshielded twisted pair [wikipedia.org] telephone cable which set a limit for the allowable power levels. To complicate matters, in a properly built bundle, different pairs will have different numbers of twists per foot (on purpose), so it comes down to averaging a lot of unknowable but guessable parameters, Putting too much signal power down one pair will affect others and vice-versa.
Other countries had different standards for the cabling, or different tolerances for crosstalk, so allowed higher power levels. which would have allowed for theoretically higher data rates.
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @02:49AM
I literally ran a BBS in the '80s and a small ISP from the early dial-up days in the 90s all the way to the present day with various last-mile "solutions." From Paradyne to Mimosa... 😀
Over those years I have run virtually every model level variant of USR Courier ever made (except for the original 9600-only HST; my very first SysOp program Courier was shipped as a 14,400 but field upgraded to 16,800, I never had one of the rare 9600-only models, though several of the other local SysOps in the local 1:134 FidoNet and SASA did...) on the analog end of the system and then digital ISDN BRIs, once that was really "a thing." Even dabbled in PRIs for a brief time. Yikes.
There was/is NO SUCH THING as 56000 over the actual phone system in North America unless your telco had/has their equipment configured outside FCC / CRTC spec, which I don't think was ever actually "a thing." You could get 53333, and most of my customers in the dial-up ISP days that were close-ish to their CO would consistently get that full rate, 52000 or 50666. All squarely 5k/sec, which was "full blast" at the time. Most others could get 44000-49333 if they could get a digital connection. Otherwise it was 31200 or 33600 maximum, obviously. If you were unlucky enough to be on a Tadiran Pairgain splitter, you were out of luck beyond 26400 or perhaps 28800. Often only 21600. Those things SUCKED.
It was limited by the FCC regulations to 53333. Of course you never saw speeds of 54666 or 56000 in the field, since they were disallowed. 🙄
44000/45333/46666 are actually pretty good speeds in some areas, though if your customers could consistently get that, they could probably manage to boost it to 48000, 49333 maybe even 50666 just by finessing the customer's premise wiring. Same idea as when provisioning for ADSL, (except not worried about high frequency per se,) but same ideas, run proper twisted pair all the way to the modem, eliminate extra connection blocks, random crappy untwisted parallel-wire line cords, extensions, bad chinesium phones, etc. and you could often easily boost a customers' average speed a couple levels just with simple shit done right... The telcos will often leave super bad bodge wiring EVEN UPSTREAM OF THE DMARC point unless you ride them and complain.... but I digress....
If you're 10 km from the rural wirecentre, you're probably still screwed... :)
Right, nobody did because full 56k isn't actually allowed to be a thing on the real, physical phone system. 😉 53333 sure was, though... Most of my customers could get ~5kbps.
(Score: 2) by UncleBen on Tuesday November 21 2023, @05:00PM
We MIGHT have gotten 56k within McCormick Place. We briefly setup a typical T1/DSL modem "bank" for the Win95 show and then another show that year. (95, if you didn't figure it out.) It's entirely possible that we got 56.6k from a booth to the modem bank in the basement. I recall that our dialup customers were pretty happy with performance at those shows. Once we returned that bank to USR, we went back to stupid speeds.
The tl;dr on the "why 56k?" was "DSL was 64k per DS0, you lose some in the analog-to-digital conversion, and the robbed-bit signalling."
For the brief and shining time I had ISDN at home, it was glorious! 128k for reals, instant connections, oh yeah, that was fun.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 22 2023, @01:34AM
Way back when I first got dial-up, I would consistently connect at 48k. It didn't seem to matter which ISP or phone service I used. I moved to a different neighborhood in the same town, and suddenly the fastest I could connect was 31.2k. I don't ever recall any variance from those numbers.
I ended up getting DSL, and used it for years, but eventually gave it up when AT&T decided they were phasing it out without offering any alternative in my neighborhood (their fiber wasn't ready yet). They led me on for a couple months, it would go out, I would call, it would come back, then a couple days later go out again. I got fed up a lot slower than I should have, and when I called to cancel they offered no argument, only a warning that I couldn't get that service again. Good riddance! I have Spectrum now, much faster at the same price, and despite their reputation I have had no trouble with them. Good thing, as there are no other choices, unless maybe satellite is considered.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Monday November 20 2023, @11:54PM (6 children)
Just for shits - posting this via 56k dial-up using Windows 95. Yup, dial-up is still out there. All it tells me is "connected at 115,200", which is just the serial port speed.
-- Posted from Microsoft Windows 95!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday November 21 2023, @12:19AM (1 child)
The modem link protocols used statistic compression since MNP5, so the port speed at double of connect speed was a necessity.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:23AM
Even more than double. Even MNP5 could do over 2x compression on many payloads.
Does anyone remember the name of the terminal program software that did MNP in software on a regular modem, like in the 2400 bps days?
The default color scheme was a mostly dark blue, but I can't remember for the life of me what the name was or what company was the author... ?? Had a big blocky title screen with white lettering, IIRC.
It WASN'T Microcom, I think somebody might have reverse engineered it (MNP), probably got tied up in court with Microcom and the product eventually vaporized, everyone involved probably subsequently tried to pretend it had never even existed... ??
I had a bootleg copy from whoknowswhere, back in the day. It was pretty cool, and I used it for a brief time for certain purposes dialing up other BBSes before I bought my first HST on the SysOp program from USR. It WAS cool, in that the serial port rate didn't matter since the MNP was being done in software on the PC side! It really was the bees knees! :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:25AM (3 children)
I call bullshit.
Link to your video or else I call it lies. 😠
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Tuesday November 21 2023, @01:06PM (2 children)
I guess I probably should do a video or something, but I just don't have time (and I won't touch Youtube any more).
But, tell you what, here are a few more details. The ISP is Earthlink. Yes, look them up, they offer repackaged VDSL and Fiber and still offer Dial-up as a "backup" method of connecting.
Since I am not a toy-cellphone loving consumertard I still have a proper copper POTS "landline". The audio clarity is wonderful on the few times when I get someone who isn't calling from a toy cell phone.
My use of Windows 95 is fairly well known. Retrozilla (Seamonkey 1.1 with updated encryption) lets me use Soylentnews, although few other web sites work in it these days.
Although I normally use my VDSL service, I periodically test the dial-up just to see if it is still around. I fully expect it to quietly disappear sometime, but at the moment it is indeed still there.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @03:01PM (1 child)
Alright, I stand corrected then. Touché, sir! :)
Ignore my sassy comment if you really were on dialup when you posted that. Kudos!
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday November 22 2023, @06:58PM
It's funny, I just cleaned my office closet and pulled out two external US Robotics HST Dual Standard 16.8Kbps modems with the upgrade daughterboard to bring them into complince with the 56K standard for v.92 (no x2 or rockwell pre-standard stuff).
Those modems were not cheap when I bought them, and the daughterboard upgrades were also not cheap...
Anyway I never used Windows 95 with them, but I did use them with DOS and terminal emulators and so on.
I had to lock the com ports to 115,200 or greater in order to hope to see 53.3Kbps down and 33.6kbps up. I got the best connections on an analog line dialing into an ISDN line, which, despite the differences, provided a bit of a cleaner connection on the far end. I heard of people getting 56K down on an analog lone connecting to a single channel of ISDN like that, but I was never so fortunate to *connect* at that speed. It might have auto-negotiated during the call, though, to that higher tier--there was no real user feedback to indicate that this happened, but it was possible.
Truly a great improvement over 16.8kbps, which was glorious in its own right.
I also have two US Robotics modems that had a dedicated side channel for voip. It allowed me and a friend (who borrowed the other modem so we could call each other with it) to talk on the same phone line that we were using to deathmatch each other in Doom with. Later, I set up a quake server with a network connection to other PCs, and he could dial into the server, I could be on the phone with him, and we could have other players in Quake at the same time -- although only he and I could voice "chat" like that.
It used 9600bps of the connection bandwidth for the voice. That means if the connection was poor, the call quality was as well. Also, you could disable that function and just use the modem for the data throughput it had. It generally connected at 33.6kbps under most conditions; it wasn't as speedy as the Courier modems.
The same friend later gave me the modem back when he upgraded his 9600bps sporster to a higher speed one via a switcheroo -- as it happens, the physical shells of the sporster modems were all identical starting with the 2400bps MNP5 external models... so if one found an old 2400 baud sportster external modem at a computer/ham radio show, and if one was so inclined, you could particpate in the clandestine upgrade program found via retail channels called "swap and replace". Not that I know anything about that! (I already wasted my money on high end Couriers, boo-hoo...)
Anyway the fine article angered me. No one chose 56K as the speed because of some magic variable due to it not being binary or decimal. It was because phone lines sucked for data and that was about as much blood as could be squeezed from the stone with the technology of the day!
Now, aside from the win95 user... I didn't think it was even possible to make such a high speed connection anymore due to other technological advances.
I kept my modems so I could make calls to places I supported when I had a power outage here--laptop and phone line would still work even if the power was out. However, when AT&T upgraded their backend to fiber and thus voip, they put a quality of service cap on the analog emulation so that way fax machines could connect at 14.4kbps at best -- I've seen as low as 9600, which businesses having to request a higher cap to allow for dedicated "analog" lines in their PBX to be allowed 14.4kbps.
In what feels really retro and like audiophile purism talking about vacuum tube types, the signaling was clipped at the edges and the warmth of the analog carrier connection was turned cold, so to speak. Only a certain frequency range was guaranteed and sometimes that was even just an up to* promise.
That still had to fight with the quality of the wiring; if it was an old building (or an old house) you might have had a better connection than 14.4kbps (like 21.6kbps was really common even when 28.8kbps was standard) but it got ruined because the noise preventing a better connection was poorly emulated on the fiber backend as digital noise and... I ended up getting cable for my internet and a UPS to provide uptime.
I once used a cell phone to play Information Society's 300 8-N-1 into a land line answering the call with a modem, and it worked (if perhaps 300bps is still within reason to ask for over a cellular connection). For the unaware, its a recording, so its easier to get a connection than a dynamic negotiation. It's too bad its such a pain to get a 25-pin serial to USB connection going on modern cell phone hardware... it'd be a fun way to change the defaults for some chatty applications network bandwidth use, but maybe my definition of fun is weird.
(Dr Russell I think we are distant kin as a result of your professed knowledge. I would deathmatch you in something, but ever since my mom came close to killing me about crazy dial-up toll charges... I have been reluctant to dial out of my calling area...even though its been 20something years...)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jman on Tuesday November 21 2023, @01:23PM
In the mid-60's, living in hometown Chicago, our upstairs neighbor worked at the main ATT switch. One day he took me on a tour. Miles of wiring, what looked like two-story racks of spaghetti everywhere. (OK, very well organized spaghetti.)
We were somewhere in the basement, and he showed me this thing, lit up under glass, that looked to be a piece of cable around the thickness of my then 5-year-old arm.
He asked, "Know what this is?", then went on, "it's the future. Something we've been working on called 'Fiber Optic Cable'.
Don't even have copper connected to the house anymore. These days I take my (potentially) 1G pipe for granted!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday November 21 2023, @01:31PM (10 children)
Tape has higher bandwidth than phone. Seeing all the retro stuff, I've been wondering how much data one could store on an ordinary cassette tape, given a halfway decent recorder. My naive ballpark estimate would be equivalent to 8 kbaud with 6 bits per symbol (30dB dynamic range for a bit of resilience and framing) for each stereo channel, i.e. 96kbit/sec. However, comparing this to a V.34 modem, and a bandwidth*dynamic factor of at least four over phone, it might be closer to 2*4*33 = 264 kbit/s.
Has anyone ever tried that or at least put some thoughts into it?
(Score: 2) by ewk on Tuesday November 21 2023, @01:55PM (1 child)
"Tape has higher bandwidth than phone."
But latency kinda sucks...
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @03:10PM
The latency may be bad, but as the old saying goes, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway!"
What's the latest LTO tape hold, 6TB each?
So a ton of tapes is what, about 30 Petabytes traveling at, say 75 mph? ... ...
Sure, the latency sucks, but the total bandwidth is pretty sweet! 😎
(Score: 2) by jman on Tuesday November 21 2023, @05:13PM (4 children)
After upgrading to the C64 and splurging on the floppy drive (actual 5-1/4", not those pretend not-really-floppy 3-1/2" things), total storage per media actually went down a little as it was only 170K (single sided, double-density), but oh so much faster than loading from tape!
Many in the Enterprise world still use tape for archival.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:29PM (3 children)
It's pretty bad when C64 floppy seemed fast for you at the time. :)
It's the slowest floppy interface ever.
SO painfully slow!!
(Score: 2) by jman on Wednesday November 22 2023, @12:02PM (2 children)
Now I have an "aging" i9 clocking billions of cycles per second, and even interprative languages run pretty quickly on it, given enough memory.
The floppy comment was that it way faster than loading from tape.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Thursday November 23 2023, @04:37PM (1 child)
No, they weren't. Not the floppy data transfer rate.
The C64-style floppy interface was by FAR the slowest, it's not even close!
Commodore 1541: 400 bytes/sec
Commodore parallel IEEE (PET): 1,800 bytes/sec
Atari 810: 2,400 bytes/sec
Apple Disk ][: 15,000 bytes/sec
IBM PC 360kB: 32,000 bytes/sec
IBM AT 1.2MB: 64,000 bytes/sec
It wasn't really, though. If the tape you were loading used a tape fastloader like Turbo 250 instead of the slow (even for tape) stock 300 baud C64 protocol, you could get 540 bytes/sec from tape. This is significantly faster than the stock 1541 drive's transfer rate.
Sure, you can do various types of fastloaders or custom firmware on the 1541 and some methods even managed to get as high as 10,000 bytes/sec (still only ⅔ the speed of a stock Apple Disk ][ !!), but Commodore's "home" line was the only crap where fastloaders ever really needed to be a thing, because their stock performance was so utterly abysmal.
(Score: 2) by jman on Friday November 24 2023, @01:17PM
That was not my experience. Using the tape drive I had from the Vic-20, it would take, say, two and a half minutes to load a game. From the floppy, it was under a minute.
Not going to argue about theoretical specs, just what I actually saw.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:15PM (1 child)
Some background reading about what was achievable back in the day: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/9260/how-much-data-could-a-home-computer-store-on-an-audio-cassette [stackexchange.com]
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday November 22 2023, @01:55AM
I knew most were in the range of some easy sort of zero-crossing detection in the 2kHz range, resulting in about 2kbps, but with some amplitude sensing, that could easily be increased. Back in the days, there was the ZN427 ADC which would have been able to retrieve 6 bits at, say 10kHz. I was wondering if anyone ever tried such a thing (or any "higher" modulation methods).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Tuesday November 21 2023, @07:35PM
Not sure about audio cassette tapes, but I remember in the 90s you could buy PC hardware that would interface to your VCR and store/retrieve data from it (using video tapes as slow tape backup), as video tapes had the helical scan recording and wider track allowing for higher data density making it feasible for data storage requirements at the time.
You could store a decent amount on a tape (I think like a few GB) and tapes were relatively cheap (especially compared to "proper" tape backup systems). Once CD-recorders became mainstream though I think the concept died out (around the early 2000's) as recordable CD's had the benefit of being readable in any CD-ROM drive, rather than needing a VCR + assorted HW to restore, and were less bulky per MB stored.
I myself have pondered that with the advance in computational power and compression/ECC algorithms, a modern implementation may well be able to store more data on such tapes (which now you can pretty much get for free, or cheap in bulk).
(Score: 2) by dwilson98052 on Wednesday November 22 2023, @01:33AM (1 child)
...network engineer at an ISP with 20K customers during the 90s and 56K was more of marketing gimmick for most customers as they rarely saw speeds much over 33.6k.
Most customers were ok with this, but many would complain and open trouble tickets with us and we'd have to help them get a ticket open with the phone company.
The biggest issue we had was distance between the user and the CO they were connected to, water intrusion, and mismatched impedance on the lines... in most cases in the early days the phone company wouldn't or couldn't do much to help as long as the line was suitable for voice. After our user base started to grow and we got a better account manager it became a lot easier to get help for customers, but there were still limits to what they could do.
Funny thing is that when DSL hit the market most of these problem customers couldn't get that either... we managed to get many of them on ISDN connections or even T-1s as the phone company could use what were effectively amplifiers to boost the signal, something they said they couldn't do for pots lines due to regulations, though there was nothing stopping them from using one of the ISDN channels for voice if the customer wanted to give up one of the 2 64K channels. IDSL was a big hit because instead of 128K from the two 64K D channels you also got to use the 16K B channel for data as well........ there was also always connected, no lag time for channels to connect.
Good times, don't miss it much though
(Score: 3, Informative) by jman on Wednesday November 22 2023, @12:07PM
Back then, 128K (even if you never really got all of it) was a huge upgrade from a "standard" modem!