Your First Adsl Memories

My first memory was replacing the ISDN line of a business I was doing IT support for with a 512kbps ADSL line, back in 2004 (when I started lurking on MyADSL), it saved them a bundle in costs (about 50% less overall) per month as well.

At home we got a 192kbps line when that product came out and fell in my affordability range, in 2005 I think.
 
It's amazing how little data we used to survive on back in the early ADSL days. It's hard to imagine now, but ADSL data used to be more expensive than mobile data is now! I remember paying R99 for a gig of ADSL data. Somehow a few gigs of data used to last the entire month. Then there was the whole local vs international bandwidth issue. I even bought a Mikrotik router to put behind my ADSL modem in bridge mode so I could run 2 PPPOE accounts, one for local bandwidth only, and one for international bandwidth, and did some clever routing with a Mikrotik script I found on MyBroadband to route traffic across the 2 connections. Good times.
 
All seems like a blur now, side tracking a bit, but I cant be the only one who remembers when cell c had free wap service?

Anyway first Adsl memories definitely include chat rooms, (iirc MSN chat) torrents (torrentspy), and a variety of **** I wasn't old enough to legally be looking at, ahh time well spent
 
MEG101 said:
I had the R7 infinite call package with Telkom that cost R49 per month apart from the Telkom line rental. ISP dial up costs was R79 per month and if I were lucky I got 40kbps that I used for downloading music, chatting, web surfing etc. I connected 8pm Friday and disconnected 6am om Monday morning and if I managed to use 2GB for weekend it was a lot. Later I got ISDN at 64kbps per channel and if you used the two channels you got 128kbps - that was insanely fast for that time. ISDN was dedicated 64 of 128kbps internet - it felt like heaven!! It all cost me R1000 plus p/m. The internet cost a pretty penny back in those days - with all the dial up stuff and caps and top ups - if you forgot the dial up on in peak hours - you could easily ran a bill of R250 for that one call.

Later I got 192kbps ADSL with a 3GB cap - that was more than enough, I even struggled to use it all up. Line speeds were upgraded to 384kbps to 512kbps to 1mbps to 2mbps to 4mbps - all with 20 to 100GB caps respectively. Later I had 4mbps uncapped - that was heaven for sure - but "uncapped" meant 400GB PUF.

Today we have a 20mbps VDSL Line that is uncapped - this is the fastest we can get - no Fiber as of yet available. Hopefully soon we will have Fiber internet - cannot wait!!
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Same here, no fiber, 20mbps VDSL. Best part of ADSL, was no modem noise.
 
RVQ said:
There was a kid in my neighborhood who's dad worked for Microsoft back in the mid 90s, they had like a 28/36k modem with dial back from Microsoft, helped us learn quiet a bit about computers back then, towards the end of the decade the internet started getting more popular and my best friend was one of the first I knew to get connected. When I started working in the early 2000's got myself ISDN and the R7 Telkom Deal, best friend had the same and we setup a network between our houses to share content. Great times for growth and learning in the 90s and 2Ks when all you had was books from CNA and an internet that you had to 'teach'.

ADSL took ages to reach my hometown, we had to go down the iBurst route with roof mounted directional antenna, but some might say there was some sort of way of possibly getting unlimited data with em which made it way cheaper than ADSL in those days
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That reminds me, back in the days internet on vodacom phones was free and I had an "advanced" nokia phone that could connect to my pc so I would set up connection sharing and browse for free. Remember it being pretty slow though...

Shaun108 said:
Back in the day, porn and information was valuable.
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Yup, people used to trade or pay. Made pretty good cash downloading VST plugins for a friend...

deweyzeph said:
It's amazing how little data we used to survive on back in the early ADSL days. It's hard to imagine now, but ADSL data used to be more expensive than mobile data is now! I remember paying R99 for a gig of ADSL data. Somehow a few gigs of data used to last the entire month. Then there was the whole local vs international bandwidth issue. I even bought a Mikrotik router to put behind my ADSL modem in bridge mode so I could run 2 PPPOE accounts, one for local bandwidth only, and one for international bandwidth, and did some clever routing with a Mikrotik script I found on MyBroadband to route traffic across the 2 connections. Good times.
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I miss Newshost...
 
1596195801343.png

BT Openworld Alcatel speedtouch "stingray" USB modem that I got in 2001 with my 512k line...
 
TEXTILE GUY said:
Oh, the internet back then
View attachment 884066
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Alta Vista man myself.

altavista-in-1997.png
 
Geoff.D said:
You forget the 600 and 1200 baud modems .... You are all amateurs at this history game.
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I had a 1200/75 modem for Beltel.
It didn't even support the Hayes command set.
 
Well I remember finishing my 1 gig cap in less than a day :confused:
 
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