Dial-up Internet access

Typical noises of dial-up modem (North America and United Kingdom) while a modem is establishing connection with a local ISP-server in order to get access to the public Internet.

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line which could be connected using an RJ-11 connector.^[1] Dial-up connections use modems to decode audio signals into data to send to a router 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 the dot-com bubble with the likes of ISPs such as Sprint, EarthLink, MSN Dial-up, NetZero, Prodigy, and America Online (more commonly known as AOL). This was in large part because broadband internet did not become widely used until well into the 2000s. Since then, most dial-up access has been replaced by broadband.

^ The Internet for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. 2 March 2015. ISBN 978-1-118-96769-0.

[1] The Internet for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. 2 March 2015. ISBN 978-1-118-96769-0.

[1]