programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
One of the key ingredients for Web 2.0 success is pervasive high speed internet access. The latest Pew internet report, which tracks broadband growth, was just released:
At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or a 40% increase. And 48 million Americans -- mostly those with high-speed at home -- have posted content to the internet.
In total, 84 million Americans now have high speed internet connections at home.
At the height of the last dot-com bubble in mid-2000, less than five percent of Americans had access to a high speed internet connection at home. But by the end of 2006, that figure will reach nearly fifty percent.
It's hard to imagine what investors and analysts were thinking back in 2000 with those wildly optimistic dot-com growth curves, because using the internet with a modem truly sucks. It's painful. When 95 percent of users are stuck with a crappy dial-up experience, it's unrealistic to expect widespread adoption of services offered via the internet.
I recently sold my 1997-vintage US Robotics Courier analog modems on eBay, after hanging on to them for years "just in case". I haven't used a dialup connection in at least five years.
As good as the 2006 numbers are, according to Lawrence Lessig, the United States still lags the world in broadband adoption-- at least through 2004:
With broadband adoption at an all-time high in the United States, can we finally assume that all users will have high-speed internet connections-- and by association, an enjoyable, responsive, non-painful way to use the internet? Or do web developers still need to accommodate dial-up users?
Well, from one perspective, Web 2.0 stuff actually serves dial-up users better than "traditional" (ha) roundtrip-based interactions, since much of the action happens in the browser, and the exchanges with the server can be significantly smaller than full-on page refreshes. No?
mike on May 29, 2006 2:37 AMMike: not if the weight of javascript exceeds the quantity of information that'd need to be passed back and forth for a full roundtrip and the execution time of said javascript exceeds about a second (a pretty decent time to fetch a fairly light webpage) or so for the effects of any one click to finish being processed clientside.
Remembering that yonder dialup users also happen to be the people most likely to be using unbearably slow machines and that a lot of Web 2.0 code is written, to be frank, entirely without consideration for the cycles consumed, it's a fairly close call for most practical purposes.
Test, Test, Test ...
Depends on content, and on the percentage of the audience you don't care about alienating.
Any developer who doesn't care to at least test their website under dialup speed seems to me to be sort of lazy.
Technopundit on May 29, 2006 5:49 AMTechnopundit: I, for one, cannot help but pledge my undying respect for anyone willing to put one of 'em "This page best viewed in Lynx" buttons on their site. :)
And, um, good idea. Mental note when building testing environments to put a machine on the edge, connected to the rest of the network by a slow PPP link over a null modem.
42% of Americans
Yes. Of Americans.
Josh on May 29, 2006 8:36 AMDo Modems Still Matter?
Yes. For me, I always get modem installed in every PC I use... for fax and voice :P Rarely use any dialup service though.
william on May 29, 2006 10:27 AMI'm with Gustaf Erikson - Mobile Users, GPRS, etc, etc.
Andrew on May 29, 2006 11:11 AMDon't forget mobile users. Even if they have fast data, the small screens and limited UI won't really use it.
I'm using my mobile phone regularly to read Bloglines on my commute, and although most of the feeds I use are full-text, I sometimes click through to a web page. Most are not mobile-friendly, having a ton of links I have to scroll past to get to the content. If they had been optimised for dial-up and/or mobile, the links should load last.
But that's by the by. I agree with Ron: if you want the broadest possible reach, include the modem proletariat.
Or do web developers still need to accommodate dial-up users?
Yup, since mobile-device browsing adoption rate is increasing. There's plenty of dialup-rate HTTP requests coming from cell phones with browsers.
Chris on May 29, 2006 11:41 AMI recently sold my 1997-vintage US Robotics Courier
analog modems on eBay
Wow, what did you get for them? I've got a couple of those lying around, I didn't figure there'd be much of a market. :)
Kevin Dente on May 29, 2006 11:48 AMRE: Jay S
I don't think I said at ANY POINT the government should just 'give us' broadband.
I just believe that broadband should be treated like other critical infrastructures and subsidized, similar to our highway system or our phone system. YES, OUR OWN PHONE SYSTEM - check your bill, there hidden among one of those pissant surcharges is a fee to help promote rural telephone access.
I'm saying if some company or state/local government wants to run broadband out to the boonies (or even the suburbs) but find it too expensive up front to invest in it, then the governent should match its funds or subsidize the project.
This is done in MANY other countries, from Australia to S. Korea and it has NOTHING to do with a free handout. It is today's reality that the internet is a crucial necessity and continuing to treat as some optional luxury that if you can't afford it, too bad is absurd. We are falling behind on technology compared to the rest of the world, and the lack of affordable broadband for all is one of the main reasons.
Government matching of funds or subsidizing does NOT equal communism or whatever you are inferring, Jay S.
Yes. Millions of propietary devices (ATMs for example) use dial-up - albeit over private networks. Unlikely to change as they only require 9K6 baud or lower to work. The call charges are negligible and a broadband/ISDN line would cost too much compared to an essentially free dial up.
daveyt on May 30, 2006 3:08 AMTry living where there is no broadband available... I do.
We have no cable, no DSL, no nothing out here, but at least I can get 49K most of the time. I am patiently awaiting the day when the telco (bellsouth) gets around to replacing several miles of copper trunk cable, with fiber, so that we join the rest of the netizens with broadband goodness.
I know quite a few folks out here who are in a similar situation. There is plenty of old copper that needs to be upgraded before everyone will have an equal ability to get broadband.
Developers, especially web developers, should be required to do at least one QA test of their web site over dial-up. There are all kinds of annoying little things that developers, on ethernet, cable or DSL. will never notice, that those of us on dial-up see regularly. An example: when I load Yahoo Mail, I immediately start typing my username and password... but the last thing the web page does is set focus to the username field.. typically when I'm halfway thru typing the password. Other sites don't have this problem, and I doubt the Yahoo Mail developers have ever seen it (because it loads so fast on other connections). Little things like that are very annoying.
Ray S on May 30, 2006 3:08 AMi'm still on dialup, and i don't think us end-users should be left out of the fun of browsing the internet. Broadband and dsl are still expensive in the country and i wish that sites won't be too bandwidth heavy:)
hybrid101 on May 30, 2006 3:28 AMI'm in rural Alabama. I don't expect to have broadband available for at least the nest 10 years.I'm lucky to connect at 28k. VOIP, Streaming video, video clips? you've got to be kidding me. All the really cool sites and features are useless to me here. HELP!!!
George Fletcher
Collinsville, AL.
Actually I'm quite glad that people have to code for modems. There are a lot of sites these days that are rediculously slow even over my 2mbit connection.
I shudder to think the flash shockwave masterwrecks I would have to deal with if they didn't have a common denominator to code for.
I'll take a fast internet over a flashy one any day.
Sean Straus on May 30, 2006 3:45 AMModem is a Modulating / Demodulating device. We still use modems with broadband.
56k Dial-up modems are still used for fax, vpn, etc.
This article is lame.
56k modems still matter to me.
Just two weeks ago, my motorola cable broadband modem suddenly died - power failure probably due to overuse heating.
I haven't been using my USR Courier 56k modem for years but it became really useful to dial up and get on the net to search for a cheap second-hand replacement and save 55%.
Joe on May 30, 2006 4:21 AMYes, modems still matter. Not everyone in the world is in the U.S., and not all sites are specific to the U.S. There's something called "the rest of the world", look it up.
Poromenos on May 30, 2006 4:23 AMI am from South Asia and here very few people have broadband internet. SO, for us a webpage of 500KBPS+ is a bit difficult to load fast and work on it. So, I guess the days of modem is not gone- not in my part of the world yet.
Razib Ahmed on May 30, 2006 4:24 AMIt depends if you give a **()(^$##!! about the 'financially challenged'. Here in job-poor Portland OR, I have plenty of my friends still stuck on dial-up. . . not that they want to, that's for sure. But the leap from $8 to $50 a month is just too much for many people, due to the high prices that our 'free market' generates.
Other countries are blowing us away with broadband proliferation due to subsidizing high speed internet, just like highways other critical infrastructure. I remember reading in Japan its $10 a month for 10mbps+??? Why are WE not doing this??? Because of crap like the state of Louisiana that actually OUTLAWS free municipal wi-fi (a nice political payback for the big donations from Comcast, etc.)
When I was in Michigan in 2001, ATTBI internet was the only high-speed connect in town. I moved all the way across the country to Portland, Oregon and guess who also was the only game in town? When they sold out to Comcast, the first thing Comcast did was hike rates by $12 a month! Qwest DSL eventually came int othe market with 1/4 the speed of Comcast, but charges only like $10-15 less a month so $40 - 50 a month is still way too high for many people.
I had to sacrifice having cable TV to afford broadband, myself, and I will be screwed on that once they shut down the analog signals in the next few years (when you must have digital TV connect or else.. . )
As everything else in the U.$. from the justice system to health care . . .if you don't have the $$$ you are left out .. . . . *sigh*
Miz J on May 30, 2006 4:38 AMA little offtopic, but Ajax(-if done right) applications, should decrease the amount of data sent to/from the webserver.
Peter Palludan on May 30, 2006 4:42 AMOh, and I almost forgot rural folk. Again, due to the wisdom of our free market ber alles system, they are left out because companies won't invest in the lines to reach them. Its not profitable enough for them as people are too spaced apart so they don't bother.
I just wonder as we continue to fall in ranking compared to other nations in broadband proliferation, if things will ever change? (probably not. . . look at our infant mortality rates compared to other industrialized nations. ..an obvious result of our 'free market' health care system)
We whine all the time about not having enough of the populace interested in math and science, with us falling behind the rest of the world. But we won't invest in the very infrastructure to help get people involved and educated??
So, are we just OK with having nations like India and China eventually surpass us in an educated populace, because they WILL provide broadband en masse? yikes. . . . .
Miz J on May 30, 2006 4:52 AMStill have mine - for the rare occassion I need to send or receive a fax.
No practical alternative as far as I can see (last time I checked web-based fax services were absurdly overpriced for regular users let alone what I need). Still cheaper than a fax machine even if I didn't have one to begin with.
Paul Coddington on May 30, 2006 5:16 AMIt's funny how your raving about 42% have broadband access but not looking at it from the other side. 58%, the majority, use dial-up, or at least non-broadband. Do modems matter? You betcha'.
Rob on May 30, 2006 5:34 AMDo modems still matter?
..they do... significant portions of the population either cannot afford broadband access or simply don't have it available to them (remoteness, ancient telco lines, etc).
With complete honesty I can say that my experience on the web over past few years has been that designers have discarded any notion of careful, thoughtful or (god forbid) compact coding/design. Less is more. This is true in design and coding. Not everyone really wants a 10MB flash presentation filling their screen.
yes they still matter the fact is that many communities cannot get a good highspeed internet connection thought verizon was going to do it using fios to get highspeed in smalltowns it has never worked with them many times just installing it in large urban areas instead of its intent this is the only way i get an internet connection
Jay on May 30, 2006 6:46 AMbroadband is not available here! you would be shocked how many places dont have broadband availability; its not just farm country. its the burbs. its pathetic; dont use the bathroom when you go to the usa, they are underdeveloped, backwater, hookworm infested, no broadband having freaks!
jesus on May 30, 2006 6:57 AMI think we should cater to just the broadband community in an effort to get everyone up to speed. It's about time we become more advanced like in South Korea where broadband is commonplace.
hacker not cracker on May 30, 2006 7:00 AMThanks Miz J!!! I bet it would be cool if the guvment would just pass one of them laws that'd make them big ol' mean companies just go ahead and pay for our food too. I mean China has free food too right? And I'd like one of them new HDTV's too. They should give us that. You're really on the right track Miz J! I really hate having to make efforts and changes in my life to have good things. Big daddy guvment should just give it to me. I love it!!!
Jay S on May 30, 2006 7:05 AMI'm in rural Virginia and I'll be lucky to see anything faster then 28k8 dialup in the next 15-20 years.
josh on May 30, 2006 7:23 AMAmerica is not the world. There are PLENTY of places NOT in America where people haven't even heard of broadband, or even dialup. Could you be MORE insular?
spike on May 30, 2006 7:50 AMUSA is not the whole world. Did you know it? So, if you only care about north-american broadband connection you will be denying access to a lot of users around the world.
ColdWind on May 30, 2006 7:59 AMI created and maintained my site from 1998 until November, 2005, using only dial-up connections. For the past 6 months, I've had DSL, but since the entire world is my site's target audience, and since the vast majority of the entire world is still using slow Internet connections, I will continue to do the extra work required to make my site friendly to dial-up users.
ComputerBob.com on May 30, 2006 8:50 AMI work at a company that sells products to businesses which in turn sell the products to farmers and other people in rural areas around the world. Probably 99% of our customers were on dialup until about two years ago. Remember 14.4K modems? I do.
::shudder::
Anyhow, I also have a few friends who keep modems handy for when they travel, just in case a hotel doesn't have high-speed...there's always a phone line!
That said, it's *not* the US government's job to provide net access. Nor is high speed access a fundamental human right.
Finally, I really don't think it was Jeff's intention to be "insular" so maybe some of ya'll need to chill out a bit.
zonker on May 30, 2006 9:46 AMOf course modems still matter. With most people unable to get broadband just 4 or 5 miles outside a major metropolitan area the only thing they have left to turn to is dial-up.
Cable isn't available everywhere. DSL is only as good as you are close to the central office. Satellite is just about the worse thing in the world, but is a stand-in for dial-up when you can't get phone service. Then there are the few left out there that have radio towers, microwave, etc. All in all, Dial-up will be around for another 5-10 years, or at least until someone finds a broadband solution that is as simple as dial-up.
bob on May 30, 2006 10:56 AMOf course modems still matter. I'm in rural Pennsylvania, and broadband is still not economically viable around here, ie the increased speed and productivity doesn't quite yet offset the artificially high price.
And as previously mentioned, 42% does not a majority constitute.
trim17 on May 30, 2006 12:57 PMI have 3 basic choices for internet access. Dialup, ISDN, or T1. If you only support broadband users you loose not only the public that has not upgraded yet, but also those who cannot upgrade yet. That is still a reasonably large portion of the population.
Phillip on May 30, 2006 1:10 PMYou bet dialup still matters. I can't get broadband, and I live just 2 miles from my mother who CAN get it. And there's no indication that broadband will get here anytime soon. Broadband is not as ubiquitous as people seem to think it is.
Tim on May 31, 2006 6:55 AMYESSSS Modems DO matter!!!
What happens when your "high speed" goes out?
What if you have a laptop with NO WiFi?
What if you are in an area that can not receive a WiFi signal?
To all the above.... YES it is still needed/used.
I have a vintage laptop "all I can afford", with NO WiFi. My Cable Internet went out for a few weeks. I needed Internet accesss. Lucky I have "Netzero" and a "56k modem".... Saved the day and my bacon.
Is it just me or would this whole thing completely defy the point in high speed connections? If sites are upgraded to be more bandwidth intensive, then everything will begin to sloooooooowwwwww down again. They are only high speed because the bandwidth far exceeds the requirements of most sites. Increase the requirements, decrease the speed. Just a thought.
YourMother on May 31, 2006 11:58 AMYes modems matter. In Houston Tx many houses are "to far" for DSL, or not in SWB (oops I mean ATT) so DSL is $40/month like RR wich is the Cable option in Htown. WIFI? Nope not here. Eihernet MAN no not in the 5th largest City. Netzero Dialup for $6.95? You bet!
David on May 31, 2006 1:38 PMFoobar: And now it's 2006, and you ought to be creating your web sites to work for screen readers and non-standard browsers for blind people and other people who're reading the site in non-traditional ways. For some sites, that's not just "ought to"; it's ADA-compliance. And testing on Lynx is a nice easy way to test for such things.
I find myself a bit annoyed at the basic premise in asking the question, though. "A substantial majority of the people accessing our site are using broadband; can't we just ignore the rest?" It's the same argument as, "A substantial majority of the people accessing our site are using Internet Explorer; can't we just ignore the rest?" What sort of company is happy with turning away 5% or 10% of their potential customers at the door due to something that could be pretty easily changed? And yet companies do it all the time online.
When dialup modem use gets to around 1% of your page hits, then maybe you can think about making a site that's virtually unusable on dialup.
(Disclaimer: I use Opera, and dialup by choice. So I get easily peeved about this sort of thing -- though, really, the sites that won't work with Opera are far more common than the ones that don't work with dialup.)
Of course the question about modems is a silly question...it seems irrational that an educated person would ponder if Websites should be taylored to 56K users. The author is probably just throwing a theory out there that he doesn't himself subscribe to...he just would like some feed back from other thinkers.
I'm a developer with some good website experience...and I still use a 56K at home. I don't really surf the web...mainly because I don't have the time and because I don't have the money to purchase things if I wanted something on a website. Until grocery stores sell produce on the web (assuming cheapper prices and better/same quality) I'll stick to my neighborhood grocery store.
Besides...I have a good job...but a lot of bills. I can't afford more than dial up. Although I get a lot better connection at work, I WORK at work and so don't surf the web there either.
Frank on July 21, 2006 10:04 AM"Other countries are blowing us away with broadband proliferation due to subsidizing high speed internet, just like highways other critical infrastructure. I remember reading in Japan its $10 a month for 10mbps+??? Why are WE not doing this??? Because of crap like the state of Louisiana that actually OUTLAWS free municipal wi-fi (a nice political payback for the big donations from Comcast, etc.)"
Subsidizing something costs money; there's no free lunch. High speed is so expensive here because it's a friggin monopoly and the market has no chance to work.
Brad on February 5, 2007 11:44 AMBroadband adoption rate passes halfway mark in US:
http://news.com.com/2110-1034_3-6160422.html
Jeff Atwood on February 19, 2007 9:09 AMDo modems still matter?? They matter to everyone having to use one be it rural area, or because it is too cost prohibitive to get DSL.
The question itself seems to come from a position of arrogance as my first thoughts were "what are you on drugs?" are you that out of touch or have you played so many online FPS games with Broadband Brats that think EVERYONE can get broadband because that is the only kind of player they ever see?
It never occurs to them that the reason they don't see modem players much if at all,, is simply because the game isnt playable on a 56k modem. I know much more of the internet excludes those who cant get broadband as much of the web content you see today gets has so much rich content it isn't worth visiting the site.
They advertise it where I live every week I get an introductory offer to Qwest DSL and Cox cable but Cox won't service this area until Qwest starts penetrating it. Qwest says they won't be out here till Cox starts service here. Catch 22.
I have been on the waiting list for 8 years and YES America IS the world when it comes to what we lead the world in.
With Microsoft, our Governments Military developing the internet in it's infancy, IBM, DELL, Apple etc when you think that all that is as American as Apple Pie, conventional wisdom would suggest we would have been a helluva lot further ahead with broadband access then we are. I am not going to have someone "shame" me because there are country's in the world who can't get a damn 56k dialup let alone DSL or Cable. The fact is THIS IS one of those country's and yeah I EXPECT MORE FROM AMERICA. Unless you are on POTS with no other internet access but it sounds like you are one of the "chosen" out there fortunate enough to have broadband and arrogant enough to invalidate us dialup users feelings as "whining".
First of all,, my NOT whining about it isn't going to get one of those other countrys on broadband internet any faster. No one is expecting it to be a governemnt entitlement moreover I wouldn't even expect it to be government subsidized.
I DO expect it to be Taxed and under all kinds of federal regulations we will ALL pay for eventually.
That being said,, I think of all the costs,, whether it be the cost private business brings to bear to extend service to rural areas or that we may be burdened with if Government taxes it,,
Falling further and further behind the rest of the world in broadband interenet will have serious ramifications at a cost we will sorely regret.
It's always cheaper to keep up
then catch up
- Kent Perry, AZ.
Kent Perry on May 15, 2007 7:58 AMYes, modems matter! We're redesigning our website and I wanted to determine how high a priority download speed should be given. My boss has dial-up and this is sort of a hot-button issue for her. She said she thought the modem-broadband ratio it was still around 50%. I figured it would be more like 75%/25% in favor of broadband. Did a quick survey of our 100 employees, who represent a good cross section of our target audience, and the ratio came in at 55 to 45 broadband to dial. Those of us who have had broadband for a few years now have developed this blind "Surely almost everyone must have it by now" attitude. :-)
Chris on May 25, 2007 12:03 PMYes, for me modems still metter
Jack on June 24, 2007 9:41 AMWhat a horribly elitist attitude. In American cities, most people have broadband, so just forget about people in rural areas, or in -cough- New Zealand -cough- where broadband is pretty much the worst deal in the OECD. Though, hopefully that will change at some stage.
Bernard on September 29, 2007 3:25 AMOf course it matters.
Even in the USA where connectivity lags and is expensive relative to the rest of the developed world (but has a high reach in average). In Cambodia you can get unlimited 3g for $30/month, and the city has had 4G coverage for almost a year now, yet even well-educated professionals can't afford the $100-150/month that a DSL or cable line costs.
I've seen beautiful user experiences that optimize the data, javascript, and html/graphics transferred just because they stuck to the essentials and used caching smartly. Design for the edge and you will have a product that is very robust at the 'center'. Stop caring about efficiency and performance for lower bandwidth and soon enough, a snappier, simpler UX will emerge from those who do.
If anything, I would encourage more website developers to increase the reach of their internet service by designing user experiences based on conversations that go 140 characters at a time!
Eduardo Jezierski on December 16, 2008 11:20 AMYes, 56k's still matter, and, yes, the net is getting more and more painful. We live in semi-rural Maine, and any kind of broadband access is still a half mile away from us, and no sign of it (ever) getting closer.
Michael Rosenstein on December 17, 2008 4:29 AMI live in rural southern Virginia and have no choice besides dial-up. There is no cable, cell-phone internet does not cover my area, for satellite internet,I would have to cut down a forest and sign up to pay over $1000 before even knowing if it would work, and no DSL because the phone company refuses to upgrade our area. Also, because of the decrepit old phone lines, I can't get anywhere near the fastest dialup speed! I can't watch video online at all, and regular text pages take a very long time to load.
So, although this article was written in 2006,
YES MODEMS STILL MATTER IN 2009!
I live in rural southern Virginia and have no choice besides dial-up. There is no cable, cell-phone internet does not cover my area, for satellite internet,I would have to cut down a forest and sign up to pay over $1000 before even knowing if it would work, and no DSL because the phone company refuses to upgrade our area. Also, because of the decrepit old phone lines, I can't get anywhere near the fastest dialup speed! I can't watch video online at all, and regular text pages take a very long time to load.
So, although this article was written in 2006,
YES MODEMS STILL MATTER IN 2009!
Do Modems Still Matter?
Yes, they do.
At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or
a 40% increase. And 48 million Americans --
mostly those with high-speed at home -- have
posted content to the internet.
Let's see, US population is about 281.4 million people, 42% works out to 118 million, leaving 163.4 million people out in the cold when sites require high-speed. But wait...
In total, 84 million Americans now have high
speed internet connections at home.
Ah, what's 34 million people one way or the other?
Well, it's 28% of the population, not 42%, for one thing. Even in major US markets, there are significant dead zones where high-speed connections are simply not available at any price.
Admittedly, this discrepancy is probably based on current internet users vs total population, but as more and more services move to the net, more and more people will need -very- cheap connections; and dial-up is still often less than one fifth the price of broadband, where available.
And the current chaos over broadband (two-tier or open internet? on-demand web movies and tv or highly restricted DRM-crippled content? pay by the month, minute, content-type, or a combination) indicates to me that this and other factors slowing the adoption of broadband in the US will continue to slow the process.
To my mind, the question isn't "do modems matter?" It's more like, "how much to they matter in -my- business plan?"
If you're pushing on-demand video, not much. If you are pushing shopping, auction, and other services that appeal to the broadest consumer base, I'd say they matter a lot; the value of almost 200 million potential customers without broadband as of right now.
Percentage of home broadband isn't the whole story. I think two other, perhaps more valuable stastistics would be:
1) The percentage of internet users with broadband access (including home, work, and school). We've all heard that a huge percentage of personal shopping is done at work; many casual internet users may be content with dialup to check personal e-mail at home as long as they have convenient broadband access elsewhere.
2) The percentage of site visits on broadband and dialup. I realize that it's kind of circular (broadband promotes internet usage), but the point is that many dialup users aren't that interested in internet usage, so they're less likely to visit your site. Broadband users are more likely to be advanced internet users, and are more likely to hit your site than dialup users who might just be checking their e-mail every few days. Some people wouldn't make much dialup if they had it.
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