Читать книгу The Dodo Collection - Steve Stack - Страница 20

Dial-up Modems

With the advent of broadband internet connections and wireless connectivity, one relatively recent technological development is rapidly becoming endangered.

Less than ten years ago, if you had a home internet connection, then it would almost certainly have been dial-up. By which I mean that your computer modem would use your telephone line to call up your internet provider and connect to the service.

This little box of mysterious flashing lights and wires would let you know it was doing its job by relaying the sounds of the phone call through your computer:

[dial tone]

[sound of a phone ringing]

blleeeep burgh krpphgspreeksplangkerlungkerlungkerlung

[pause]

bleepsping plonk plonkkerchang dank dank ding

[ad lib to fade]

By the end of which you would, six or seven times out of ten, be connected to the internet. But, boy, would it be slow. Dial-up internet connections were typically 56 kilobits per second, which is 12½ times slower than the slowest broadband connection. To put that in perspective, a film that would take you 30 minutes to download via broadband today would have taken over six hours on dial-up.

And then there is the fact that it used your actual phone line. Unless you were savvy enough to have more than one line coming into the house, going online meant nobody else could use the phone. This sparked cries of, ‘Get off the bloody phone, I need to send some emails!’ or ‘Get off the bloody internet, I need to call my mother!’

So it is a good thing that we have moved on. It really is. But those of us who heard them shall never forget those squeally plinky plonky noises.

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