Dial-up Internet Access - Performance

Performance

Modern dial-up modems typically have a maximum theoretical transfer speed of 56 kbit/s (using the V.90 or V.92 protocol), although in most cases 40–50 kbit/s is the norm. Factors such as phone line noise as well as the quality of the modem itself play a large part in determining connection speeds.

Some connections may be as low as 20 kbit/s in extremely "noisy" environments, such as in a hotel room where the phone line is shared with many extensions, or in a rural area, many miles from the phone exchange. Other things such as long loops, loading coils, pair gain, electric fences (usually in rural locations), and digital loop carriers can also cripple connections to 20 kbit/s or lower.

Dial-up connections usually have latency as high as 300 ms or even more; this is longer than for many forms of broadband, such as cable or DSL, but typically less than satellite connections. Longer latency can make online gaming or video conferencing difficult, if not impossible. First-person shooter style games are the most sensitive to latency, making playing them impractical on dial-up.

Many modern video games do not even include the option to use dial-up. However, some games such as Everquest, Red Faction, Star Wars: Galaxies, Warcraft 3, Final Fantasy XI, Phantasy Star Online, Guild Wars, Unreal Tournament, Halo: Combat Evolved, Audition, Quake 3: Arena, and Ragnarok Online, are capable of running on 56k dial-up.

An increasing amount of Internet content such as streaming media will not work at dial-up speeds.

Analog telephone lines are digitally switched and transported inside a Digital Signal 0 once reaching the telephone company's equipment. Digital Signal 0 is 64 kbit/s; therefore a 56 kbit/s connection is the highest that will ever be possible with analog phone lines.