The one thing everyone gets wrong about download speeds on old modems

I keep seeing people talk about how they got 56k downloads back in the 90s like it was instant for everything. That's not how it worked at all. I remember downloading a 3MB file of a Doom level pack on my 28.8 modem and it took almost 20 minutes. People forget that connection speed was theoretical max and you'd actually get like 4-5 KB/s if you were lucky. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just being that guy?

2 comments

2 Comments

barnes.morgan1mo ago

Everyone forgets compression was doing a lot of the heavy lifting back then. That 5KB/s you saw on a text BBS or a simple webpage was actually compressing the data on the fly before it hit the modem, so you got way more than the raw speed suggested. But for binary downloads like game levels or MP3s which were already compressed, you were stuck with the real raw speed, like 3-4KB/s. So people misremember because their brain sees the fast text and assumes that was the baseline for everything, when it was only for simple html and chat.

derekp701mo ago

Yeah but I mean, people are probably remembering those BBS downloads and game patches where you'd get a solid 5KB/s because the server wasn't congested. Maybe it's just me but I had a 56k modem that could hit 7KB/s on a good day with a clean line and a good ISP. I dunno, the Doom level packs took forever sure but a lot of stuff like Prodigy and AOL screens loaded faster than people give them credit for.