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[William Grimsley]

Here's a screenshot of my first internet speed test result.



What's yours?

[kitz]

Dont know about first internet speed as it would have been in the days of dial up on a 33k modem..
but this is one of my first broadband speeds

[burakkucat]

I don't think we considered the concept of "speed testing", back in the day with V21 modems. (300 bps.)

Unix systems were being used, serially-linked (with some cross-linking) and making use of UUCP to transfer data.     

[Weaver]

I did do a little bit of speed testing back in the 1990s, to see how well some data compression algorithms were working. Some good modems had very powerful compression in them, which worked nearly as well as ZIP on text files, some exes etc. I remember having a modem which did 49kbps raw throughput including error correction overheads, but with a compressible text file 200k+ was measured by timing a straight file transfer.

[WWWombat]

My first ever file transfers were between Unix and Multics machines.

The Unix machines used hhcp commands, but Multics needed to be bodged ... it thought the files were coming in from a card reader, and going out to a card punch.
I think that could be measured in terms of the number of cans of paint that dried.

My first file transfers using the internet happened without a direct connection to the internet. I could get access to real email ... so downloads happened by using email to FTP gateways, which would grab the file for you, split it up, and send you hundreds of uuencoded portions.

That was regularly used to download initial Linux releases, probably as far as some Slackware floppy distributions. The manual effort to extract, decode, combine, and write to floppy was "high".

[burakkucat]

However, back in those days, it was interesting and (dare I say it) enjoyable to attempt to achieve such aims. 

[WWWombat]

It most certainly was 

Perhaps my excitement threshold was off-kilter, though. Getting Minix to boot into a 386 protected mode was a real highlight around our way!

[sheddyian]

I recall that my first speeds were 1200 bits per second downstream and 75 bits per second upstream.

Bonus points for anyone who can say what dial-up system I was using and (roughly) when 


That said, when I first got ADSL, I was getting around 14000 down and 800 up, but DLM worked in my favour and over the next few weeks it kept bumping up until I was around 18000 down and 1020 up.

Fiddling with wiring / new filters (NTE5 MK3) and changing to an unlocked Huawei 612 in ADSL2+ mode now gives me around 20000 down and 1020 up, as I'm very close to the exchange.

Happy enough with this speed that I'm currently not considering moving to fibre at the moment.

Ian

[jelv]

I think the first speed tests I did were running on a 1200 baud line!

[Weaver]

My first ever file transfers were between a PC and a prototype new handheld computer I was working on which was called the Psion Organiser II. It could certainly manager 9600 bps over RS232 (possibly even 19200, I forget). Every day I used to do file transfers between a DEC VAX and a PC, again 19200 bps RS232.

We used to have a terminal to the VAX and two PCs each, a very powerful and expensive Dell 25 MHz 386 with 4 MB of RAM running MSDOS and an Amstrad PC clone with two floppy disk drives in it, I can't remember whether or not that Amstrad machine had a hard disk in it. All this kit was used to develop and debug a new GUI and a new operating system for a forthcoming laptop. No network cards yet, RS232 and sneakernet was used to glue everything together.

[burakkucat]

I recall that my first speeds were 1200 bits per second downstream and 75 bits per second upstream.

Bonus points for anyone who can say what dial-up system I was using and (roughly) when 

A V23 modem . . . about 1983? And FidoNet?   

[WWWombat]

I recall that my first speeds were 1200 bits per second downstream and 75 bits per second upstream.

Bonus points for anyone who can say what dial-up system I was using and (roughly) when 

With 1200/75 rather than 300/300, I'd guess at a Prestel-like service, in maybe '85. Was it you that hacked Prince Philip?

[WWWombat]

We used to have a terminal to the VAX and two PCs each, a very powerful and expensive Dell 25 MHz 386 with 4 MB of RAM running MSDOS and an Amstrad PC clone with two floppy disk drives in it, I can't remember whether or not that Amstrad machine had a hard disk in it. All this kit was used to develop and debug a new GUI and a new operating system for a forthcoming laptop. No network cards yet, RS232 and sneakernet was used to glue everything together.

RS-232 is cheating, surely!

In my first job, we were developing a 30-channel connection between a PABX and DEC Vax's, which could be utilised from terminals plugged into the back of smart, ISDN-like, desk phones. The 2Mbps connections carrying the 30 channels were the very height in luxury - only to be dreamed of! 2Mbps was beyond "power users" - it was for serious mega-corps!

Oddly, I don't think I ever did any kind of file transfer work over the links; that part "just worked", leaving us concerned about the call setup and signalling.

[Weaver]

@WWombat - and here's me moaning about 2 MBps! I remember when a 1.5 Mbps line was considered fast.

[sheddyian]

I recall that my first speeds were 1200 bits per second downstream and 75 bits per second upstream.

Bonus points for anyone who can say what dial-up system I was using and (roughly) when 

With 1200/75 rather than 300/300, I'd guess at a Prestel-like service, in maybe '85. Was it you that hacked Prince Philip?

haha, yep, is was so Prestel-like that it was Prestel (actually via Micronet-800) and I did indeed sign up in 1985!

I didn't hack Prince Philip - wasn't that Robert Schifreen (sp?), who died fairly recently?

Prestel was charged at a local rate - there was (usually?) a local number to call to connect to it (I had to dial a rotary dial phone and then switch the modem online when I heard the tones).  I think at the time this worked out about 1p per minute.  If you used Prestel after 6pm, there were no usage fees, just the call charge; before then there was an additional fee (1p per minute? I forget).

A few years later, BT, perhaps trying to make the Prestel service pay, removed the free off-peak usage, and that was the end of Micronet-800 very quickly.

Thinking back to it, it was oddly futuristic and yet oddly archaic and familiar, with it's teletext graphics.

Imagine, being able to look up train times (albeit from a fixed, not live, timetable), do online banking (via one bank - I forget who it was now, but it wasn't my one!) and buy groceries online (not in my region though).

In 1985!

Ian