by Nathan Edwards

Created on: April 18, 2008

Dial-up technology has been around since the late 80s, and back then, it was the latest and greatest, and probably the most reliable way to connect to the internet. However, we live in 2008 now, and high-speed internet (DSL and cable) are now the latest and greatest for home users.

I think dial-up internet started to lose its quality when two things happened. First, the telephone networks refused to continue upgrades to the data networks, saying that they were not cost-effective, effectively placing a transfer rate cap of 56K per second (which still exists, by the way). However, most people who connected to AOL or their local ISP only managed to get a 28.8K connection anyway, largely because that was the most bandwidth the proxy servers could dish out to users. Second, as newer technology was coming out, many people didn't want to have to have 2 phone lines for internet and phone usage. For the people in the 90s who never did get a second phone line, they risked being disconnected whenever they received a phone call.

Also, dial-up just didn't stick with the standards of today. With DSL or cable, we can get as much as 5 Mbps, almost ninety times the maximum amount dial-up offers us. We can also get download speeds as much as 500 KB/s, compared with dial-up's 2.7 KB/s. Saying that dial-up is better today is like saying that the original Playstation offers better graphics than the PS3, which is utterly ludicrous.

Sure, because dial-up is slower and less reliable than DSL is, dial-up is also cheaper. Where I live, DSL (or cable) costs $45 a month, compared with dial-up's unlimited plan of $23 a month, plus phone line fees. However, this cheapness is exactly what defines dial-up; today, dial-up is cheap, both in quality and in price compared with DSL's speeds and reliability.

Of course, DSL isn't without its problems as well. For example, it may be difficult for your DSL modem to reconnect to your ISP's DNS servers, rendering you without internet for a couple of hours. However, DSL will not interrupt you during your online work like dial-up does. Another neat plus is that you can be on the phone and on the internet at the same time, on the same line. DSL's benefits outweigh its problems, and most certainly outweigh both dial-up's benefits and problems.

Thus, DSL is way better than dial-up on almost every level, while dial-up is becoming more and more obsolete.

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