This Sunday there is a short detour into the history of the Internet, from the World Wide Web (WWW) and the increasingly interactive Web 2.0 to a possible Web3. This raises the question: How and when did you first go online? Already in the 90s with a modem and 2,400 to 38,400 kbit/s or only via ISDN?
Table of contents
- 1 When did you go online for the first time?
- How did you first go online yourself?
- Participation is expressly encouraged
- The last ten Sunday questions
The author of this Sunday question first dialed into the Internet in 1996 at the age of 12 with an Elsa MicroLink 28.8TQV, a modem with a downlink of 28,800 bit/s, using one of the then very popular AOL CD-ROMs with 120 free minutes used.
The price per minute of around 5 to 15 pfennigs due after the free quota was taken over by the parents at the time and CD-ROMs with further free hours soon followed.
When did you first visit the internet?
At the beginning of the 1990s, sending e-mails sometimes cost extra, and in the 1970s and 1980s the real IT specialists and pioneers still dialed into mailboxes with an acoustic coupler and sent digital data via analog data lines.
< p class="p text-width">But when were the ComputerBase readers online for the first time?
When were you online for the first time?
- I'm a pioneer and I was online back in the 1980s
- I was in the 1990s and online for the first time in 1995
- I was online for the first time between 1996 and 2000
- I was online for the first time between 2001 and 2005
- I was online for the first time between 2006 and 2010
- I was online for the first time between 2011 and 2015
- I was online for the first time between 2016 and 2020
- I'm new and was online for the first time after 2020
- Abstention (show result)
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The first telephone modems, which represented a further development of the acoustic coupler, were expensive fun, so an Elsa Elsa MicroLink 2400M as a table model cost around 1,950 DM in 1988.
Speeds increased from 2.4 kbit/s to 56.6 kbit/s and the author's 28.8k modem cost around DM 280 to 300 in 1996. Then ISDN came along – later also with channel doubling – the silver bullet for access to the Internet, WWW, e-mail and Usenet.
How were you online for the first time?
With ADSL and later also VDSL, users had several Mbit/s (initially 768 Kbit/s) in the downlink for the first time. At the same time, the age of Gbit/s was already ushered in, even if it was by no means widespread, but in companies and at universities.
But what bandwidths were available to ComputerBase readers for the first time available?
What bandwidth was available to you at the time?
- 1,200 bps to 9,600 bps
- 14,400 bps to 56,000 bps /s
- 64 kbit/s to 128 kbit/s
- 256 kbit/s to 1 Mbit/s
- 2 Mbps to 16 Mbps
- 32 Mbps to 100 Mbps
- 150 Mbps to 1 Gbps
- 2 Gbps to 10 Gbps
- Abstain (Show result)
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What hardware did you use when you first connected to the internet?
What hardware did you use to go online for the first time?
- Acoustic coupler
- Telephone and fax modem
- Windows or software modem
- ISDN modem or plug-in card
- ADSL or VDSL modem
- fiber optic modem
- cable modem
- satellite
- Abstain (Show result)
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It remains to be seen how the internet will develop in the near future. Web3 is an idea for a new generation of the World Wide Web, based on the blockchain and incorporating concepts such as decentralization and token-based economy.
This counter-proposal to Web 2.0, which is dominated by Big Tech, can already be seen today, but has yet to prove itself.
Participation is expressly encouraged desired
The editors would be very happy to receive well-founded and detailed reasons for your decisions in the comments on the current Sunday question.
Readers who have not yet participated in the last Sunday Questions are welcome to do so. Exciting discussions are still going on in the ComputerBase forum, especially on the last surveys.
The last ten Sunday questions
- Sunday question: Do you optimize your gaming PCs with the help of OC and UV?
- Sunday question: VR gaming was, is and will remain something for the niche, right ?
- Sunday question: What is the name of your RGB boss?
- Sunday question: Who else do Napster, Kazaa, eDonkey and eMule say?
- Sunday question: Have you ever owned a graphics card with a dual GPU?
- Sunday question: Which Sunday question would you ask yourself want?
- Sunday question: Is open source an alternative for you?
- Sunday question: Windows Defender offers sufficient protection, right?
- Sunday question: Which architecture was more groundbreaking : Zen or Core?
- Sunday question: PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo?
- Sunday question: The future are games from the cloud! Or maybe not?
- Sunday question: Windows 11 or still Windows 10 and why?
You have ideas for an interesting Sunday question? The editors are always happy to receive suggestions and submissions.
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