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.

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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, 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 Since then, most dial-up access has been replaced by broadband.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.

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