Eli5 In the days of dial up internet how would large organisations (or even homes with more than 1 computer) enable multiple computers to use the internet at once

Question

Eli5 In the days of dial up internet how would large organisations (or even homes with more than 1 computer) enable multiple computers to use the internet at once

In: 4

Answer 1

Large organizations usually used a sort of “bundled line”

At home, you’d have a single PC using a single, analog phone line that could carry 56k

For business customers, you could get digital lines that could carry 64k.

You could buy bundles of business lines. The most common was the T-1. A T-1 is 24 digital lines, which tops out at 1.54 mb. (64k x 24 lines)

I say tops out because usually we split these between voice and data. So you’d use say 12 lines for your phone system and 12 for Internet, which would get you 768k Internet.

In the mid 90s you could run a really big office on 768k. To give you an idea how simple websites were in the 90s, the Dole/Kemp96 website is still live. That thing was cutting edge.

For business, your T-1 was always on and plugged into a router or proxy of some sort.

Multiple home machines online just wasn’t a thing.