56k – 128k – 1Mbps
The only thing worse then watching paint dry is watching Mp3’s download.
Or for that matter – any download you can think of. I use to work at an ISP, after 5pm and on the weekends I was the only one sitting at the end of a nice fast T-1… BIG pipe of hunkin’ data transferin’ love. It was great to download an .ISO in roughly 20 minutes.
My first modem was a 300 baud one, you pulled the phone off the hook and put it on there, so it talked to the phone. I was quite impressed getting upgraded to a 2400 buad modem in my first IBM machine. Imagine – not being able to type faster then it could could transmit! I was in heaven.
That modem lasted me a good 4 years probally. In ’93 I got my first 28.8k modem. Imagine, downloading a 2MB file in 9 minutes! Imagine the group of computer geeks gathered around watching, oohing and ahhing over the data transfer rate.
I think I probally upgraded to 56k in 1995 or so. I connected to the ISP I was working for at quite a decent rate, and thought I was the coolest around. I was even cooler when I hooked it into my ISDN modem – people were amazed that I was connecting at 52k. I was amazed I was connecting at 52k.
In 1996 I moved and invested in DSL. 512k downloads, 128k uploads. Man I was in heaven on Earth. Porn, MP3, warez, and the occasional piece of data from work. Not to mention that new-fangled interweb thingie.
Now… even that is slow. At work I’m on only a 10MBit network connection, shared among three computers on my desk. And that’s still a million times (literally,) faster then any modem.