16-AUG-2005

It was 10 years ago (kind of) that I abandoned my modem. To commemorate the occasion, I upgraded my DSL connection at home to "full rate" witch is 8 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

In 1996 I was still using my trusty old SupraModem 14.400 - the one with a fancy little matrix display on the front. Cutting edge at the time was 28.800 bps but I had my mind set on a leased line - no more counting minutes and having to go off-line. I wanted a 24/7 connection.

The telephone company in Turku, where I lived at the time, offered a service they called "KotiWeppi" witch was a leased line with a 19.200 bps connection at an affordable monthly fee. Although even slower than the fastest modem, it gave me a fixed IP number and an internet connection that was constantly on.

In 1998 I moved to Helsinki where one company had started to offer a high speed leased line connection using a new technology called ADSL. Although it was targeted at companies and small businesses - and priced accordingly, I ordered a connection.

The guys from the telephone company that installed the second copper wire in my apartment - for some reason they claimed 4 Mbps could not be handled by a single telephone cable - said I was the first private person in Finland to get a DSL connection. Perhaps they were right, I don't know.

The ADSL modem was a US Robotics Viper DSL Model E. It had a PowerPC CPU and a built in web server through whitch it could be administerd. The actual DSL connection was 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. This was pretty cutting edge in 1998.