Evolution of Internet

Way back in 1995 - 1996, where Internet in Malaysia is still in its infancy, I was one of the few lucky ones to have a 14.4k dial-up modem to TMNet's 1515. Even then I was not the first one in my hometown to have an Internet line at home, there were some other nerds who got it first before me.

Then there were no Windows messenger (MSN Messenger), no Yahoo Messenger (YM), Google is still unheard of and the most powerful search engine is powered by Inktomi, Hotbot. ICQ is still starting out (where people get 5 digits or 6 digits number when they registered), and we were the few pioneers to join mIRC and hang out in DALnet (Dragon Realm Network) servers.

Things were really slow then when I get to become a SuperOP in smtbm (Sekolah Menengah Taman Bukit Maluri) which I didn't even know where was it then. Then we created a new channel name valentine and I get to become the co-founder. At its peak, valentine channel was listed as one of the most popular in mIRC client for DALNet where anytime in the day, there will be more than 100 users concurrently online in the channel. Then followed by the channel sitiawan, and a few minor ones.

After than I registered for ICQ due to the reason that DALNet has begun to ban Malaysian IPs (because of hacks and bots). We were one of the unlucky innocent few.
ICQ is one persistent program that manage to stay with me for more than 5 years.

By 1998, most of us have jumped to 56.6k connection speed and we were playing TF (Team Fortress) on Quake then. Then it was named TFC (Team Fortress Classic). Our favourite server is Killing Fields (KF) which is based in India. I still remembered that S'pore players were able to get a ping of sub 100 ms but Malaysians are stuck with 400 ms ping, sometimes we were able to get 200 ms ping, ISDN (which is freaking expensive then), are always at 200 ms ping. Those S'poreans were able to frag us more than we could do it to them, but oh well, we had some well known snipers around which can even kill those players with 10 ms ping like those local players from India.

By 1999, I was still stucked with dial up to 1515. Streamyx started to roll out only since 2000 - 2001 in major areas, I believed. When we were in college, we were one of the first few from our area to register at TMNet branch in Titiwangsa. The first modem we get from them is the Hyundai Hase 220 which can get a max of 32kbps in Setapak. There were 4 of us who are online almost all the time but we manage to cope with only 32 kbps.

Oh well, 8 years later, here I am, with redundant streamyx line with optional maxis 3g mobile roaming with my cellphone for Internet access.

Just lazy to go year by year anymore. :P