[riceart]

1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs.

> that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image.

Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usually be a 10s of kB in those days, so maybe some seconds, not even a minute.

[dgacmu]

This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university.

(I helped create the third public ISP in Utah (ArosNet), in 1995).

V34 (28.8k) was only ratified in 1994, and many ISPs were still at 14.4 at that time. Many customers still used much slower modems - 9600 remained quite common.

The commercial Internet really only started taking off in 1993. Not by coincidence, that was the same year NCSA Mosaic was released.

[photonerd]

Wow, Utah really lagged on getting an ISP, huh?

From a UK perspective: my family got dual up in ‘94, there were lots of ISP options & it was basically impossible to buy anything slower than 28.8k new (at retail anyhow, I’m sure you could special order) as no-where stocked them. 28.8 took over fast.

I think the UK had lots pf ISPs at the time because without a local number to call it was VERY expensive rather than just kinda expensive. But that’s just a guess.

[jacquesm]

I was still fighting local telcos in Canada in 2003 to get filters removed so I could go above 9600 baud.

[riceart]

> This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity).

> The commercial Internet really only started taking off in 1993.

1993 is before 1994.

I am very much scratching my head by how this contradicts anything I stated in a way that makes it not correct.

If a commercial ISP existed in 1993, then by 1994 plenty of regular people would have been getting internet access - without any special affiliation other than a credit card - ie mainstream. (Per your own comment “many had internet access before that”) - those affiliated were among the first to have internet access is a pretty reasonable interpretation and that was well before 1994 in all of the continental US.

[bluedino]

I would say dial up Internet was far from mainstream in 94, even with was widely available.

I'd argue it wasn't until 96/97 when "everyone" started using it and membership didn't quite peak with services like AOL until 2001.

The internet was still the land of the nerds until the early 2000's

[icedchai]

It's difficult to generalize. It definitely depends on your location, and especially population density. Before 1995, it was mostly nerds and early adopters. By 1995, in the north east US, dial up internet had definitely gone mainstream. Local ISPs had ads on the radio. A new one was popping up everyone couple of months. By late 1997, early '98, broadband services (@Home cable modems, DSL) were starting to roll out.

The Netscape IPO, in summer 1995, and also the release of Windows 95, really marks the "mainstream" period. Getting online with Trumpet Winsock and Windows 3.1 was a PITA.

[riceart]

> The internet was still the land of the nerds until the early 2000's

The first dot com boom, sort of the genesis of fortunes that make this site exist was prior to the early 2000s.

The early 2000s was the bust period.

[doctor_eval]

Right, unless the backhaul was massively overcommitted... which was normal at the time because it was really difficult to sufficiently provision backhaul, even a few months in advance. The internet was certainly not fast in 1994.

Anyway, since when does the truth need to get in the way of a good story?

[nine_k]

You assume 28.8, good phone lines, and a responsive server. Sometimes it was an old 9600 because it was all you could easily get, noisy lines, and the server on the other end being slow because the picture was popular. Then a page could load for a minute, with pictures and all.

Not 15 minutes though.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Dialup services were available. Most had little to no internet connectivity. The few services dedicated to internet access were not mainstream yet. MS was preparing to deploy MSN 1.0 with no internet because that was just a hippie fad.

[xedrac]

I remember having dialup in 1994 through xmission. It was the same year my dad installed Slackware on our basement computer.