@elrainia@lemmy.world describes working on internet infrastructure back in the 1990s. This was on one of those "drive by" AskLemmys where a new user posts a juicy question, then after a couple hours they delete the topic and their account. However, those posts and comments are still visible in Piefed, ex: https://piefed.social/post/1733969#comment_9969293
In '87-88 I distinctly remember a Mac BBS in the Philly area called "19 East," so named because it was run from a 19K bps modem. (EDIT yeah, actually it was probably 9600) I recall that modem being expensive for the time, but not absurdly so. But still, not something we college kids would typically own.
A 2400baud modem in the late 80's was perfectly fine for normal BBS access / use, and would only bog down a bit for downloading warez, which of course was a super-common activity those days.
@elrainia@lemmy.world
I didn't see any 19.2k modems until 92-93 and I was obsessed with finding one, so that's either very impressive or another case of one of us remembering poorly as alluded to in the post. :)
Yeah, checking just now, 19k seems highly unlikely for that date. I think it was probably 9600 bps, instead. Memory sure does get garbled, easily...