Dial-up Internet access is a form ofInternet access that uses the facilities of thepublic switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to anInternet service provider (ISP) by dialing atelephone number on a conventionaltelephone line which could be connected using an RJ-11 connector.[1] Dial-up connections usemodems to decode audio signals into data to send to arouter or computer, and to encode signals from the latter two devices to send to another modem at the ISP.
Dial-up Internet reached its peak popularity during thedot-com bubble. This was in large part becausebroadband Internet did not become widely used until well into the 2000s. Since then, most dial-up access has been replaced by broadband.
In 1979,Tom Truscott andJim Ellis, graduates ofDuke University, created an early predecessor to dial-up Internet access called theUsenet. The Usenet was aUNIX-based system that used a dial-up connection to transfer data through telephone modems.[2]
Dial-up Internet access has existed since the 1980s via public providers such asNSFNET-linked universities in the United States. In the United Kingdom,JANET linked academic users, including a connection to theARPANET viaUniversity College London, whileBrunel University and theUniversity of Kent offered dial-up UUCP to non-academic users in the late 1980s.[3][4][5]
Commercial dial-up Internet access was first offered in 1989 in the US by the software development company Software Tool & Die, with their service called "The World".Sprint andAT&T in 1992 also began offering internet access, along withPipex in the United Kingdom.[6][7] After the introduction of commercialbroadband in the late 1990s,[8] dial-up became less popular. In the United States, the availability of dial-up Internet access dropped from 40% of Americans in the early 2000s to 3% in the early 2010s.[9] It is still used where other forms are not available or where the cost is too high, as in some rural or remote areas.[10][11][12][13]
Because there was no technology to allow different carrier signals on a telephone line at the time, dial-up Internet access relied on using audio communication. A modem would take the digital data from a computer,modulate it into an audio signal and send it to a receiving modem. This receiving modem woulddemodulate the signal from modulating analogue noise and demodulating it back into digital data for the computer to process via a modem that would decode the data, and send it to the computer.[14]
The simplicity of this arrangement meant that people would be unable to use their phone line for verbal communication until the Internet call was finished.
The Internet speed using this technology can drop to 21.6kbit/s or less. Poor condition of the telephone line, high noise level and other factors all affect dial-up speed. For this reason, it is popularly called the "21600 syndrome".[15][16]
Dial-up connections to the Internet require no additionalinfrastructure other than thetelephone network and the modems and servers needed to make and answer the calls. Because telephone access is widely available, dial-up is often the only choice available forrural or remote areas, wherebroadband installations are not prevalent due to low population density and high infrastructure cost.[11]
A 2008Pew Research Center study stated that only 10% of US adults still used dial-up Internet access. The study found that the most common reason for retaining dial-up access was high broadband prices. Users cited lack of infrastructure as a reason less often than stating that they would never upgrade to broadband.[17] That number had fallen to 6% by 2010,[18] and to 3% by 2013.[19]
A survey conducted in 2018 estimated that 0.3% of Americans were using dial-up by 2017.[20]
TheCRTC estimated that there were 336,000 Canadian dial-up users in 2010.[21]
Broadband Internet access viacable,digital subscriber line,wireless broadband,mobile broadband,satellite andFTTx has replaced dial-up access in many parts of the world. Broadband connections typically offer speeds of 700kbit/s or higher for two-thirds more than the price of dial-up on average.[18] In addition, broadband connections are always on, thus avoiding the need to connect and disconnect at the start and end of each session. Broadband does not require the exclusive use of a phone line, and thus one can access the Internet and at the same time make and receive voice phone calls without having a second phone line.
However, many rural areas remain without high-speed Internet, despite the eagerness of potential customers. This can be attributed to population, location, or sometimes ISPs' lack of interest due to little chance of profitability and high costs to build the required infrastructure. Some dial-up ISPs have responded to the increased competition by lowering their rates and making dial-up an attractive option for those who merely want email access or basic Web browsing.[22][23]
Dial-up has seen a significant fall in usage, with the potential to cease to exist in future as more users switch to broadband.[24] In 2013, only about 3% of the U.S population used dial-up, compared to 30% in 2000.[25] One contributing factor is the bandwidth requirements of newer computer programs, likeoperating systems andantivirus software, which automatically download sizeable updates in the background when a connection to the Internet is first made. These background downloads can take several minutes or longer and, until all updates are completed, they can severely impact the amount of bandwidth available to other applications like Web browsers.
Since an "always on" broadband is the norm expected by most newer applications being developed,[citation needed] this automatic background downloading trend is expected to continue to eat away at dial-up's available bandwidth to the detriment of dial-up users' applications.[26] Many newer websites also now assume broadband speeds as the norm, and when connected to with slower dial-up speeds may drop (timeout) these slower connections to free up communication resources. On websites that are designed to be more dial-up friendly, use of areverse proxy prevents dial-ups from being dropped as often but can introduce long wait periods for dial-up users caused by the buffering used by a reverse proxy to bridge the different data rates.
Despite the rapid decline, dial-up Internet still exists in some rural areas, and many areas of developing and underdeveloped nations, although wireless and satellite broadband are providing faster connections in many rural areas where fibre or copper may be uneconomical.[citation needed]
In 2010, it was estimated that there were 800,000 dial-up users in the UK.BT turned off its dial-up service in 2013.[27]
In 2012, it was estimated that 7% of Internet connections in New Zealand were dial-up.One NZ (formerly Vodafone) turned off its dial-up service in 2021.[28][29]
AOL discontinued its dial-up internet service on 30 September 2025 after thirty-four years of operation, following an announcement a month earlier.[30][31] It is estimated that over 163,000 to 175,000 people still used dial up in 2025 before shutting down in the U.S.
Modern dial-up modems typically have a maximum theoretical transfer speed of 56 kbit/s (using theV.90 orV.92protocol), although in most cases, 40–50 kbit/s is the norm. Factors such as phoneline noise as well as the quality of the modem itself play a large part in determining connection speeds.[citation needed]
Some connections may be as low as 21.6 kbit/s in extremely noisy environments, such as in a hotel room where the phone line is shared with many extensions, or in a rural area, many kilometres from the phone exchange. Other factors such as long loops,loading coils,pair gain,electric fences (usually in rural locations), anddigital loop carriers can also slow connections to 21.6 kbit/s or lower. Because of this, it was nicknamed "21600 Syndrome".
The values given are maximum values, and actual values may be slower under certain conditions (for example, noisy phone lines).[32]
| Connection | Bitrate | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 110 baud (Bell 101) | 0.11kbit/s | (110 bits per second) | |||
| 300 baud (Bell 103 orV.21) | 0.3 kbit/s | ||||
| 1200 baud (Bell 212A orV.22) | 1.2 kbit/s | ||||
| 2400 baud (V.22bis) | 2.4 kbit/s | ||||
| 2400 baud (V.26bis) | 2.4 kbit/s | ||||
| 4800 baud (V.27ter) | 4.8 kbit/s | ||||
| 9600 baud (V.32) | 9.6 kbit/s | ||||
| 14.4 kbit/s (V.32bis) | 14.4 kbit/s | ||||
| 28.8 kbit/s (V.34) | 28.8 kbit/s | ||||
| 33.6 kbit/s (V.34) | 33.6 kbit/s | ||||
| 56k kbit/s (V.90) | 56.0 to 33.6 kbit/s | ||||
| 56k kbit/s (V.92) | 56.0 to 48.0 kbit/s | ||||
| ISDN | 64.0 to 128.0 kbit/s | ||||
| Hardware compression (V.92/V.44) | 56.0 to 320.0 kbit/s | (variable) | |||
| Server-side web compression | 200.0 to 1000.0 kbit/s | (variable) | |||
[The dial-up sounds are] a choreographed sequence that allowed these digital devices to piggyback on an analog telephone network. A phone line carries only the small range of frequencies in which most human conversation takes place: about three hundred to three thousand hertz. The modem works within these [telephone network] limits in creating sound waves to carry data across phone lines.What you're hearing is the way 20th century technology tunneled through a 19th century network; what you're hearing is how a network designed to send the noises made by your muscles as they pushed around air came to transmitanything [that can be] coded in zeroes and ones.
Analog telephone lines are digitally switched and transported inside aDigital Signal 0 once reaching the telephone company's equipment.Digital Signal 0 is 64 kbit/s and reserves 8 kbit/s for signaling information; therefore a 56 kbit/s connection is the highest that will ever be possible with analog phone lines.
Dial-up connections usually havelatency as high as 150 ms or even more, higher than many forms of broadband, such as cable or DSL, but typically less than satellite connections. Longer latency can makevideo conferencing andonline gaming difficult, if not impossible. An increasing amount of Internet content such asstreaming media will not work at dial-up speeds.
Video games released from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s that utilized Internet access such asEverQuest,Red Faction,Warcraft 3,Final Fantasy XI,Phantasy Star Online,Guild Wars,Unreal Tournament,Halo: Combat Evolved,Audition,Quake 3: Arena,Starsiege: Tribes andRagnarok Online, etc., accommodated for 56k dial-up with limiteddata transfer between the game servers and user's personal computer. The first consoles to provide Internet connectivity, theDreamcast andPlayStation 2, supported dial-up as well as broadband. TheGameCube could use dial-up and broadband connections, but this was used in very few games and required a separate adapter. Theoriginal Xbox exclusively required a broadband connection. Many computer and video games released since 2006 do not even include the option to use dial-up. However, there are exceptions to this, such asVendetta Online, which can still run on a dial-up modem.
TheV.42, V.42bis andV.44 standards allow modems to accept compressed data at a rate faster than the line rate. These algorithms usedata compression to achieve higher throughput.
For instance, a 53.3 kbit/s connection with V.44 can transmit up to 53.3 × 6 = 320 kbit/s if the offered data stream can be compressed that much. However, the compression ratio varies considerably. ZIP archives,JPEG images,MP3, video, etc. are already compressed.[34] A modem might be sending compressed files at approximately 50 kbit/s, uncompressed files at 160 kbit/s, and pure text at 320 kbit/s, or any rate in this range.[35]
As telephone-based Internet lost popularity by the mid-2000s, some Internet service providers such as TurboUSA,Netscape, CdotFree, andNetZero started using data compression to increase the perceived speed. As an example, EarthLink advertises "surf the Web up to 7x faster" using a compression program on images, text/html, and SWF flash animations prior to transmission across the phone line.[36]
The pre-compression operates much more efficiently than the on-the-fly compression of V.44 modems. Typically, website text is compacted to 5%, thus increasing effective throughput to approximately 1000 kbit/s, and JPEG/GIF/PNG images are lossy-compressed to 15–20%, increasing effective throughput up to 300 kbit/s.
The drawback of this approach is a loss in quality, where the graphics acquirecompression artifacts taking on a blurry or colorless appearance. However, the transfer speed is dramatically improved. If desired, the user may choose to view uncompressed images instead, but at a much slower load rate. Since streaming music and video are already compressed at the source, they are typically passed by the ISP unaltered.
Other devices, such assatellite receivers anddigital video recorders (such asTiVo), have also used a dial-up connection using a household phone socket. This connection allowed to download data at request and to report usage (e.g. orderingpay-per-view) to the service provider. This feature did not require anInternet service provider account – instead, the device's internal modem dialed the server of the service provider directly. These devices may experience difficulties when operating on aVoIP line because the compression could alter the modem signal. Later, these devices moved to using anEthernet connection to the user's Internetrouter, which became a more convenient approach due to the growth in popularity of broadband.
