How 90s dial-up Internet worked, and let's make our own ISP.

Up until home broad band came into existence the only way to access the internet at home was to get your modem to call the ISP's phone number and listen to the unpleasant sound that would happen.
In this video we look at the history and technology of dial-up ISPs and build one our self.

0:00 - Introduction
1:02 - A word from our sponsors
1:45 - Let normal service resume
3:07 - Bell 101 Modem
3:51 - Hayes Smart Modem
7:38 - Building an ISP
8:34 - Telephone line simulator
11:05 - Building a Linux Dialup Server
14:28 - Client setup
15:34 - First test
16:00 - Comparing our setup to a commercial one
19:36 - 56k modems & ISDN
25:50 - Radius
27:20 - Testing over the real phone network
29:59 - Free serve
34:50 - The coming of broad band
35:43 - Emergence service after the POTS switch off
37:27 - Thanks

[PsRohrbaugh]

For those who never experienced it... It's hard to describe just how high tech it felt taking a boring telephone, hooking it into a modem, and suddenly connecting to the entire world through these futuristic and slightly scary modem sounds. Hearing them again honestly gave me a chill.

[stevejohnson]

Two friends and I started an ISP in 1995 in southwest Michigan, based on two '486-based Linux computers, one Portmaster (serial port concentrator), and a connection to a T1. We planned on growing to 10, 000 users over the course of 3 years, and hit that point in about 9 months. Subscriptions were $20 a month, and we sent a diskette with Mac or Windows software with PPP, IP stack software if the OS needed it, a very early browser, an early e-mail app, etc. Motivation came from friends and colleagues switching from Windows to IBM's OS/2 Warp in order to get access to the internet. We figured if people were willing to put up with that hassle, they'd support a more usable alternative that let them keep their preferred OS. We were absolutely right.
As our subscriber base grew, we'd add portmasters & modems, T1s (eventually larger circuits), etc. We kept our site in the basement of a spaghetti restaurant (as far as I know, it's still there), complete with 56K modems. The company is still in business (absorbed through numerous acquisitions); I still have that e-mail address :-)
After a year or so, we stopped renting equipment closet space in little towns, and switched to virtual POPs with numbers all over the Midwest... kept the financial model pretty simple.
There are still many rural areas in Michigan that don't have broadband service; I can't imagine what it must be like accessing contemporary bloated websites over dialup!
We called ISDN "It Still Doesn't Network"

[cfriedel]

I was a System Administrator at an ISP in central PA in the 1990s. We started with modem racks and terminal servers called Livingston Portmaster 2e. We worked that way until we could get channelized T1 and PRIs, which allowed us to use the Livingston Portmaster 3 and let us grow pretty big. I also got to build and manage a bunch of UNIX, and later, Linux machines and get into a lot of other technologies like T1 and T3 circuits. Still remember things like line encoding and setting up circuits on Cisco routers with a CSU/DSU. That job was so much fun. Sadly, it ended with some bitterness when the owner sold the company and it was basically pulled apart since the new company didn't care about anything other than the customer list. While it was going on though, I absolutely loved it. So much fun! Thanks for bringing the memories back!

[SirCarcass]

When I went off to college in 1997, I signed up with a local ISP. I went to pay my first bill in person, and was shocked to find that the ISP was just a little room being rented in the back of a gas station. Having only used AOL up until that point, I expected them to be huge corporations full of servers or something, but it was just 2 guys in a room full of racks of modems.

[dv]

I stayed on dial up far longer than I wanted. I lived out in the countryside, where there wasn't any broadband service for years after it had been universally adopted in any built up area. Websites and web services were getting really bloated because data efficiency was not much of a priority anymore, and user experience was the big thing. With broadband all the additional data transfers weren't a problem, and being always online became the norm. Using a dial up modem, with the line drops, packet drops, phone bills, and people actually having to use the line for phone calls was not a good time. Downloading a file of a megabyte in size was something you had to plan in advance, and hope it didn't get corrupted, or you would have to try again later. Online gaming was a problem not because of playing the game itself for me (sure there was lag and dropped connections), but because I couldn't get the required updates downloaded because of the sheer size of them. LAN parties were also not just for gaming, but file exchange and sharing was a huge part of it in those days for the same reasons.

[BDMcGrew]

Love the video, totally retro! I was one of the first ISP's 'selling' internet access in the mid 90's where I was. Started with a large stack of USR and Hayes modems on a FreeBSD 2.2.2 box. Those were the days!

[josys]

In the late 90s we had a programming instructor at my college who decided that his ISP sucked. So, he decided that he would become an ISP himself, and then service his local area with internet. Of course this was going to be expensive, and earlier we had receive a 20, 000 dollar grant to help update our networking lab. I think we had spent about 5000 when the rest of the money disappeared. Funny, and I'm sure it's just a fluke, but suddenly our instructor had all the money he needed to setup his own ISP. Weird hua? They also provided email services and his son used to tell me how his dad loved to stay up all hours of the night reading other people's emails. So yes, you could indeed become an ISP in your own home.

[asrarhassan]

I remember how I bragged my U.S Robotics modem to my peasant friends who only had poor PCI modems. The U.S Robotics modem was famous for not dropping the dial-up call, amazing technology back in the day.

[terminalterminus]

Worked with someone who was running their own ISP on the side in a garage, eventually migrating to providing cheap international calls across the internet before finally retiring at 34 to a big house somewhere with a warmer climate...

[GeekyGarden]

We had a local bank here in the mid 90s that started offering minimal online banking. As an add on they hosted their own ISP and gave you a discount. I used them as my ISP through college. I had dial up until 2006!

[paulideez]

Reminds me when i made my own dial up ISP using 6 modems and a cable modem to give all my users free PPP access the the internet.. well.. the the cable company sued me. Ahhhh 1997 was a hell of a year

[electrmaker]

The house I live in now in the united states was previously owned by somebody who ran an ISP. One of the bedroom closets was set up as a server closet with extra power, and there was(maybe still is) 50 twisted pairs ran into the back of the house.

[SomeGuyInSandy]

Man, so many memories. I started my first IT job in 1990. I also worked on people's PC's on the side. Modems and I were wrapped up in a love hate relationship, lol. I quit that job in '95 and went to work for a reseller that sold PBX'a and what not. I can't count all the ISDN modems I installed, as well as terminal servers. (I still love terminal servers). Good times!

[AdministrativeReload]

Back in the day the local rural coop phone company where I lived allowed dialup customers to have multiple connections at the same time logged in with a single account if you had a 2nd phone line. I had a pentium pro server running NT and software that could bond internet connections. Two 56k modems bonded got me 112k peak, which was pretty luxurious in those days, especially in a rural area. As a bonus, I could disconnect one of the lines and use it to make a voice call while still remaining online with the other line. Ran that configuration for several years until DSL got rolled out. Today that coop has completed fibre to the doorstep for their entire service area and offers gigabit internet to all members.

[geoffpool]

Great Video! I'm remembering my USR 56K v90 until I upgraded to DSL in 2002. Went to 400 kbs and thought I died and went to digital heaven. Great times. Keep up the great content!

[stevenyemc]

I was A Dial Access Implementation engineer for UUnet back in the day when broadband was just being tested. fun days! Now a Lucent Max TNT fully loaded was one hell of a modem! In one center I installed 80 of them lol. Was awesome to be able to connect my laptop at 100Mbs full-duplex to the core net.

[pdahandyman]

This is one of the coolest and nerdiest things ever. I used to deal with all that crap, all the way back to the 14.4 days. It seemed magical then, and it's just grown exponentially ever since.

[richardwheatcroft]

In 1996 (I think) I remember saving enough cash to pay for a years worth of Internet at my local ISP with a reasonable discount.
Turning up to a house on the edge of an industrial estate, I was very amused to see a bank of USR modems, just like I had one sat by my own computer, blinking away on the melamine and twin slot shelving. :) not quite what I had imagined at the time.

[justjoeblow]

I have the (miss)fortune of having caught the tail end of dial up here in the US from a mix of both getting into computers really young and dial-up sticking around in the states well into the early to mid 2000's. I used NetZero back in the day as well as dialing into a few local BBSes that where still up at the time that where mostly dedicated to file sharing. I do not miss the speeds of dial-up at all but this was a nice trip down memory lane.

[gertdoering]

Whoa. Author of mgetty here :-) - never thought I would end up watching a video on youtube, how to install and configure that small piece of software I wrote 30+ years ago... - amazing.