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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine if we said that about web sites at the begining.

The web was fast (for documents on 56k) and extremely useful almost immediately. It was obvious to everyone watching that the technology was going to change everything.

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I think you misremember. I was definitely on the net and the web with a 14.4k modem. It was not that useful. The web was a pretty small part of the net iirc until the mid-90s. I preferred IRC channels and BBSes then since I was very young and didn't have the patience for most websites to load and I couldn't instantly join the "conversation" like I could with a BBS or an IRC channel.

I do not understand the downvotes here. "It was obvious to everyone watching that the technology was going to change everything": how to disagree?

I wasn't a down-voter, but I didn't have 56k in 1994.

14.4 baud iirc. You wouldn't call it fast.

I think something regulatory changed about 1995, such that there were instantly tons of ISP startups, and I think that 33.6k modems were available about then.

I had a 14.4K Zoom modem, but I'm pretty sure the ISP I worked for around '95-'96 was buying lots of US Robotics 33.6 modems.

I agree that 56k came a bit later, and didn't necessarily work on any particular phone line.

IMHO what changed in 1995, was MS adding TCP/IP to Windows 95. Prior to that you had fight with dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, PPP and PPTP to get on the internet at all. Most normal people still couldn't do it without help, but it moved into the realm of possible.

During 95 or 96, I was explaining to customers over the phone how to set up Trumpet Winsock and MacTCP/PPP. Most people didn't instantly get Windows 95, so it wasn't the reason that the ISP existed. And it was already possible to access the internet to some extent through an established online service, I think I'd used Delphi, AOL, maybe others during high school.

Something made it feasible right then for anybody to set up a bank of modems in their apartment, to provide direct internet, and there was an explosive growth in small ISPs before they consolidated. At the time, I was kind of oblivious to the historic moment, but the one I worked for was literally a few modems in the closet of a crummy apartment downtown when I started and within months we'd moved to an office a few blocks away and were installing modems like mad.

I found this, not necessarily authoritative:

"In 1994 the National Science Foundation commissioned four private companies to build four public Internet access points to replace the government-run Internet backbone: WorldCom in Washington, Pacific Bell in San Francisco, Sprint in New Jersey, and Ameritech in Chicago. Then other telecom giants entered the market with their own Internet services, which they often subcontracted to smaller companies. By 1995 there were more than 100 commercial ISPs in the USA."

I think that was probably it - right then and there anyone could buy a pipe to the internet and connect some modems. It was around then that I heard the term "T1" which was a lot back then.

Maybe there was some connection to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_Act...

What was Apple's market share of desktops at the time? And whether you were talking people through a Trumpet WinsSock install or I was doing it in person, it wasn't going to get done that way, just too slow. Sure lots of physical infrastructure (modems etc...) had to be added, no disagreement there. Anyway, it's all a long time ago now. A funny aside, thinking of Apple in those days reminded me of "Cyberdog" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog. I wonder if anybody has done a side-by-side of Cyberdog vs Safari. Things change.

>What was Apple's market share of desktops at the time?

I don't know, but probably significantly better than a few years later, due to how vast an improvement 95 was.

There really, in my view, and in some of the magazine reviews I read back then, was nothing to recommend Windows 3.1(1) except if (a) you couldn't afford a Mac, or (b) you wanted to run software that wasn't available for one.

Suddenly, once 95 got traction, people promoting Macintoshes had to make excuses for the lack of memory protection or pre-emptive multitasking, on top of the high prices. And Windows just wasn't as godawful ugly any more.

But at the moment that ISPs were all sparking into existence, I don't think the wave had quite arrived. I mean, people were getting it and I do remember vaguely the initial version of IE, but 95 wasn't even the majority of PC users for a little while.

A browser for 3.1 that I kind of remember from those days, that lapsed into obscurity, was Cello:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_(web_browser)

Yea, I'm afraid that's not so. In 1993, I was running a WildCat BBS and I was way more hyped about that and it's RIP graphics, lol. The only way I could get on the internet at all was through other peoples university accounts, which required dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, and PPP. It was a chore to get running and was very slow on the 14.4k (and slower) modems of the day. 56k modems weren't introduced until the late 90s. So yea, between 90 and 95 other technologies seemed more appealing like BBSs, Gopher and places like "The Well", at least to me.

In 1993, iirc, I borrowed a Mac and 2400bps modem from my high school that I used to call the library and AOL.

Before that, the way to get software (for me, because I wasn't a college student) was to go to a local computer store and copy their disks containing free or shareware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish

But everything changed about 1995.

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