Re: Reminiscing our first internet connections (WAS) Re: akamai yesterday - what in the world was that

[Aled Morris via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2020 at 12:53, Bryan Holloway <bryan () shout net> wrote:

> I seem to also recall that you couldn't use a 56k modem unless the
> far-end was digital.

Exactly so - the connection to the telephone network needed to be as
"clean" as possible for the modem to achieve the best rate, which was only
possible with DSPs talking PCM directly into the PSTN to synthesise the
perfect analogue representation of the signal.

56k modems were asymetric - the uplink was 33.6 (V.90) as that's the best
you could get whistling up an analogue line.

I'm guessing that if the modem industry didn't target the US market first,
those modems would have been 64k download.

Aled