[perl4ever]

I think something regulatory changed about 1995, such that there were instantly tons of ISP startups, and I think that 33.6k modems were available about then.

I had a 14.4K Zoom modem, but I'm pretty sure the ISP I worked for around '95-'96 was buying lots of US Robotics 33.6 modems.

I agree that 56k came a bit later, and didn't necessarily work on any particular phone line.

[mftb]

IMHO what changed in 1995, was MS adding TCP/IP to Windows 95. Prior to that you had fight with dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, PPP and PPTP to get on the internet at all. Most normal people still couldn't do it without help, but it moved into the realm of possible.

[perl4ever]

During 95 or 96, I was explaining to customers over the phone how to set up Trumpet Winsock and MacTCP/PPP. Most people didn't instantly get Windows 95, so it wasn't the reason that the ISP existed. And it was already possible to access the internet to some extent through an established online service, I think I'd used Delphi, AOL, maybe others during high school.

Something made it feasible right then for anybody to set up a bank of modems in their apartment, to provide direct internet, and there was an explosive growth in small ISPs before they consolidated. At the time, I was kind of oblivious to the historic moment, but the one I worked for was literally a few modems in the closet of a crummy apartment downtown when I started and within months we'd moved to an office a few blocks away and were installing modems like mad.

I found this, not necessarily authoritative:

"In 1994 the National Science Foundation commissioned four private companies to build four public Internet access points to replace the government-run Internet backbone: WorldCom in Washington, Pacific Bell in San Francisco, Sprint in New Jersey, and Ameritech in Chicago. Then other telecom giants entered the market with their own Internet services, which they often subcontracted to smaller companies. By 1995 there were more than 100 commercial ISPs in the USA."

I think that was probably it - right then and there anyone could buy a pipe to the internet and connect some modems. It was around then that I heard the term "T1" which was a lot back then.

Maybe there was some connection to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_Act...

[mftb]

What was Apple's market share of desktops at the time? And whether you were talking people through a Trumpet WinsSock install or I was doing it in person, it wasn't going to get done that way, just too slow. Sure lots of physical infrastructure (modems etc...) had to be added, no disagreement there. Anyway, it's all a long time ago now. A funny aside, thinking of Apple in those days reminded me of "Cyberdog" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog. I wonder if anybody has done a side-by-side of Cyberdog vs Safari. Things change.

[perl4ever]

>What was Apple's market share of desktops at the time?

I don't know, but probably significantly better than a few years later, due to how vast an improvement 95 was.

There really, in my view, and in some of the magazine reviews I read back then, was nothing to recommend Windows 3.1(1) except if (a) you couldn't afford a Mac, or (b) you wanted to run software that wasn't available for one.

Suddenly, once 95 got traction, people promoting Macintoshes had to make excuses for the lack of memory protection or pre-emptive multitasking, on top of the high prices. And Windows just wasn't as godawful ugly any more.

But at the moment that ISPs were all sparking into existence, I don't think the wave had quite arrived. I mean, people were getting it and I do remember vaguely the initial version of IE, but 95 wasn't even the majority of PC users for a little while.

A browser for 3.1 that I kind of remember from those days, that lapsed into obscurity, was Cello:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_(web_browser)