What was the internet like in the 90s?

[avengedSeventimes]

I recently discovered the interesting world of internet massage boards and forums. Ever since I've started to find things like Facebook and twitter boring and restrictive. I want to ask some of the computer veterans, what was the internet like in the 90s, with those 56k lines, large computers and IRC.

What were those days like. Do you miss them? Why/why not?

[N S]

The first time I used the internet, it was about 1996. Websites were pretty basic...just one or two pages and there were a lot of fansites. People tended to use 'comic sans' type fonts and it was difficult to upload images.
Because broadband wasn't around then, we had to make to with dial up (56k modems) which could be a pain. You couldn't use the phone if you were on the internet, pages would take a while to load up especially if there were images on the page and very often, you would be disconnected for no apparent reason!
Chat rooms were hugely popular in the 90s because they were a new thing I suppose. The idea of being able to chat to people in other countries without having to meet them or paying huge amounts of money seemed amazing!

[faithfulsun283]

The internet in the 90's was... "Dial up". I can say I don't miss those day's. When the line would "Dial up", the computer would make this noise. Which was very loud. "Dial up" was like dialing a phone number... only on speaker phone and was on going continuously, until the line connected. Sometimes the line would disconnect while dialing and even in the middle of working on something. Meaning what ever you were working on would be lost.

[THE best answer]

I loved using the internet back then even though it was a hassle. I used a 56k line, and every time I connected to the internet it took about 2 minutes just to connect and any time your computer connects to the internet it makes a very unique and annoying sound which became very well recognized. And worst of all I couldn't be on the phone and internet at the same time, so whenever I got called I got kicked off and had to sign in to the ISP again.

The webpages were really primitive compared to today's webpages, as there was no such thing as CSS yet or Flash when I started using it. I remember the graphics looked pretty bad too since they were usually GIF images which are low quality. Graphics were used minimally since they took so long to load.

I do miss those days because back then it was so much fun to use, so groundbreaking, oh and not to mention MUCH less ads. It was a good part of my childhood.