56k.rip – the 1996 dial-up internet experience

dnewcome

I just remembered ripterm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol

riddley

Fun and cool. The News made me chuckle.

illusive4080

Cool, but webpages load too fast.

rvz

[dupe] see previous conversations in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340252

the_hoffa

Reminds me of this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/3227/ Select modem mode and just hurt.

russellbeattie

I'm sure someone pointed this out in the other thread, but 56kpbs modems essentially didn't exist in 1996. They launched at the end of the year, cost a ton, and the manufacturers hadn't standardized the speeds, so it really didn't matter much as you weren't browsing AOL, MSN or Compuserve with it yet. 33.6k.rip is a harder domain name to get though, so I get it.

Vaslo

A lot of people don’t know how cool it felt to dial into the internet or a service like Compuserve or Prodigy and suddenly have this whole world open up to you. Even at 56k.

Xeoncross

That reminds me. Can we standardize cypress tests to load the website via a restricted speed as one of the tests? Some of of our modern webpages are still slow on the latest iPhone/Pixel/Samsung over 5G. 8,600,743 bytes of assets and frameworks later I'm finally able to see your contact-us address.

brightball

Beautiful. Now we just need to bring back BBS’s and the daily turn based games. Legend of the Red Dragon, Usurper, etc.

asxndu

Why do the websites feel faster than modern internet?

uproarchat

It was fun chatting with you guys :D

strikefo

this is great, but everything loads WAY too fast. It took forever to get anything to load back in the day.

t1234s

Dialing in with Terminate and then using lynx was a real experience.

bonyt

A while back, I set up a server that limits bandwidth through it to roughly max dialup speeds https://dialup.moveything.com/ . It has some gifs, progressive jpegs that are fun to watch load, and a mirror of xkcd. It uses rate limit buckets per-IP on the server side, applied before SSL termination so it doesn't include that overhead. If you open two tabs, they'll have to share. If your behind a NAT, you'll have to share with your NAT-mates. And, it also has headers saying not to cache anything, so you can continue to enjoy the experience.

artyom

Lovely. 16MB of RAM in the 90s? That's luxury. And that dial-up sound always takes me back to happier times. Not unlike normal people's childhood songs.

VCFundedGenYer

Vibe coded replica, not the actual OS or programs. Also riddled with inaccuracies.

ajasmin

That's surprisingly well done

101008

Amazing. When we were all living offline by default, and you had to go online. Now sadly it's the opposite. (When did this change? Around 2012?)

thijsvandien

Hah, it's funny how the right environment brings back the same old vibes also in chat.