Does Dial up internet Disconnects less then High Speed Cable, and DSL internet?

[froggyboy604]

In my experience, yes dial-up internet seem to be more reliable with very few disconnects then broadband cable internet when I used dial-up in the late 1995-2003s since I can buy my own dial-up modem from a local computer store, and read reviews on which dial-up modem is the most reliable instead of being stuck with whatever modem the Cable internet company gives me which may not always be the best modem.

I can also do my own repairs and replace my dial-up modem when it fails by buying a new Dial up modem to plug into the computer's PCI expansion or serial port.

Dial-up internet is slow, but it rarely disconnects in my experience except if someone accidentally picks up the phone, or pulls the phone line from the dial-up modem, so I can't dial the internet in my experience, but I had times where my Cable internet disconnects for a few hours, or minutes, and randomly reconnects to the internet a few years a go.

I also notice the speeds of dial-up internet is more consistent meaning it is always slow or the same speed at 5 KBps during downloads unlike broadband internet like Cable which could be very fast, but also very slow if too many people in my neighbourhood are downloading huge files during the summer when high school and college students stay home, and download a lot.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

yeah, when I had dial up I never had any slow downs or disconnections.

 

[hissae2]

When I had dial up 2-3 years ago it was extremely slow. D:

 

[VirusZero]

Dial up was slow... But then again it was a stepping stone towards higher speed internet. Though I wouldn't say it was more reliable if someone could pick up the phone and disconnect you. That's not really reliable at all. That's actually kind of fragile. And given that most current high speed connections don't have that issue at all, I'd say they are a bit more reliable.

Also the individual user's experience with a particular brand of high speed is not always a representative of the entire service. Sometimes people get a bad modem. Or if the modem starts to die it affects the service. (We have to replace ours about every 2-3 years.) or service in a particular area is new/old and has troubles (lines need replacing, damage gets done to them by storms, etc...).

Though there have always been periods during the day where connecting was harder or slower than others. Particularly around 4 PM here was when we had the most trouble connecting with dial up, staying connected and generally browsing around. And now around 4 PM is when the net is the slowest because that's when the most people are using it. (Though some companies also use a different model so that everyone is guaranteed a set speed, albeit a bit slower than if they could pull from the excess unused speed, but it's guaranteed even if there is a high traffic time. So for myself, I can have the exact same browsng experience at 4PM as I can 12PM or 3AM.)

But we have to remember that dial up and high speed are different in that there are vastly more users on high speed now than there were on dial up. So resultingly network congestion is a significantly larger problem that adds up faster.

But counteractively, if you compare dial up and high speed, you get dial up at 5 kilobytes per second download speed... your high speed is ~160 kilobytes per second say (considering an ADSL line rather than a Fiber Optic line that gets about 1.6 megabytes per second) so we're in excess of 32 times faster. Would you really trade the 32 times speed for any supposed reliability? If you tried to watch a youtube video it'd take you hours to even load a few minutes. And forget playing games online at dial up speeds.

 

[froggyboy604]

If you subscribe to a second phone line only for dial-up, and not phone then the chance of someone picking up the phone are slim to none,

Dial-up may still be good for people who need a second internet connection in emergencies to reply to business or school related instant messages, e-mail, and do important text and pictures based tasks like blogging, and website promotion as a job on the internet since all you need is a working phoneline. You can also ask your friend, neighbor, or family if they are willing to let you use their phoneline at their house for Dial-up while your phone line is being fixed. I believe a cell phone with the right apps can also be used as a dial-up modem, but it probably use up all the minutes pretty quickly depending on how much you used your cell phone to dial the internet.

Some people also use Dial-Up modems to send faxes to fax machines (those phones which can print letters from fax messages) if their Dial-Up modem also supports Fax.

I also believe buying dial-up is pretty easy since you phone up the company, and they give you the phonenumber, user name and password to set up Windows to connect with their service. You can also use more then one dial-up service if one fails, you can use another phone number, user name, and password from another company you or a friend subscribe to.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

huh, never thought about using cheap dial up as a emergence back up.

 

[Black Angel]

Not in my case, dial up always disconnected on me and very often.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

Not in my case, dial up always disconnected on me and very often.

maybe someone was messing with the phone?

 

[froggyboy604]

I just use Sprint for my dial-up and it was pretty good. I heard NetZero Dialup in the US is also pretty good. But, AOL dial-up is not as good, and slightly overpriced compared to other dial-up services.

 

[Spiritwarrior]

I currently have Budget Dialup and Netzero as backup ISPs in case my DSL connection goes down, but I never used dial-up when I first got the Internet at home. I think it depends on the connection setup or the ISP itself.

 

[Vash]

I remember using dial up from late 1990s. It used to disconnect quite often, and it's extremely slow. Might get disconnects every other connect, but annoying enough even when it just happen on occasion.

I got DSL at around the year 2000. DSL rarely fails me. I might get a disconnection once or twice a year at most. Not to mention it is hundreds times faster than dialup.

With 56k dialup, you would be lucky to get 5~6kbytes download speed. Usually it would be slower, like 3~4KB per second. Right now I am on 6Mbits ADSL. No way I am going back to anything slower.

 

[Lleyn]

Dialup was more unstable for me as well.

 

[Black Angel]

maybe someone was messing with the phone?

I'm pretty sure it was just a shitty connection.