What is "dial-up"?

What is "dial-up"?

Ethan Feerst and Dylan Stewart (Technology Therapist, Mac Guru) gives expert video advice on: What is a "search engine"?; What is the difference between "upload" and "download"?; What is "spam"? and more...

Some people I suppose still use dial-up technology someplace, and if you are using dial-up technology you're probably not watching me now. It is still possible to communicate with computers via dial-up, and if you have enough patience and persistance, you'd be amazed at the kinds of performance you can get out of dial-up technology. There used to be no broadband networks. One day not so long ago there were no broadband networks, there was no DSL, there was no cable internet. Broadband was somehting reserved for big, big coprorations and government and very high-priced engineering firms. The only communications structure that existed in this country was the telephone network. Dial-up would use something called a modem, a modulated demodulator to convert information into sound and sound back into information. All those whistles and bells and clicks that you've heard whenever you dial a fax machine or a fax machines dials you, taking advantage of that modem technology, that modulator demodulator, to somehow push and compress and turn all that digital information into something that can actually be transmitted across a phone line. It's not very fast, but it still does work and still does sometimes have applications.