The Joy of 21.6Kbps...

[PriestJPN]

I officially claim my place at top of the list of the world's slowest connections to the internet.... A fear-inducing 21.6Kbps!!!

Situated on a good old BT DAX (?) exchange with no chance of DSL anytime soon, I slice thru HTML like an internet ninja most days at a max connection speed of 28.8Kbps *IF* I'm lucky.....

One day I even reached those lofty depths of 14.4.. Dark days indeed. Most days I think it would be easier to write 0s and 1s on a sheet of paper and send it by carrier pigeon. Man, do I love South West Wales!!

Anyone else in modem hell, where 56Kbps is a mere dream?!

[Shad]

You would get more bandwidth (at the expense of yet more latency) from a GPRS connection via a mobile phone.

It might cost you 5 times as much though

[PriestJPN]

It really is appauling, tbh... ^_^ Most people browse the web on their mobiles faster than I can on my 2400+. Bah humbug.

I'd be willing to bet that even some less fortunate people in developing nations get faster DLs than me....

[Stewart]

Man, this 2mb connection isn't all its cracked up to be... I had to wait several minutes for a 200mb patch the other day...

21.6kbps? That's like really slow, and stuff.

[/smug]

You're right on your second point as well. There are tribes living in the Amazon, as yet untouched by civilization, that can connect to the internet faster than 21.6kbps, using only the leaves from the Umfasser tree, a large ripe frog, and some... well, lets just call it 'foul magic'.

[Steve]

I reckon you should train yourself to be a modulator/demodulator. You might do a better job of speed negotiation than the modem on the line - better error handling an all that.

It will also be fun to watch somebody pretend to be a modem!

[Twigman]

I can make the sounds...lol
I remeber being in some remote village in nothern Iceland with a population of a few hundred (if that), and they were testing the 54mbps wireless (this was a year or two ago), so ever house has these wireless connections and they all linked back to the postoffice who had a phat pipe, and they had uber fast internet...that was when I had only just got ADSL...

[Howard]

Cool.

Went to my mate's the other day and went on tthe net on his computer and my god did his modem dialing up bring back memories oif old

[DaBeeeenster]

I spent a (very hectic and busy) week at 28k a month back. Extremely painful. Trying to admin a Linux box from the other side of the world at 28k is enough to test anyone's sanity...

[directhex]

OfTel rules, as of midway through last year, mean BT had to legally remove DACS on request, regardless of cost. BT did a good job of training their staff to deny it, but it WAS in black & white on the oftel website.

the new government department, ofcom, make no such demands. hooray.

[directhex]

yep. 25th july 2003, anythign less than 28.8k is a defective line that must be rectified, same as if it was dead.