Right at the start of the 2000s DayJob had ISDN (initially using one channel then the two bonded for 128kbit), and while it was night and day compared to the unreliable 42/21¹ I got at home from a nominally 56k connection², it wasn't all that impressive compared to what I was used to at university in terms of throughput most³ of the time.
Admittedly the office was well out of town making a "proper" leased line extortionately expensive, so ISDN was the best practical option until we moved.
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[1] or 33k6 when I forced it to use that standard to get the faster upstream rate
[2] always on, fixed addresses, faster, didn't drop if a sparrow farted nearby, …
[3] the link we had there did get over-contended at times, but not as much as you might think as this was before connections were available on dorms so Pele had to head to a computer room to get online so if I did get lower than ISDN performance it was likely due to the other end or peering limitations between
Right at the start of the 2000s DayJob had ISDN (initially using one channel then the two bonded for 128kbit), and while it was night and day compared to the unreliable 42/21¹ I got at home from a nominally 56k connection², it wasn't all that impressive compared to what I was used to at university in terms of throughput most³ of the time.
Admittedly the office was well out of town making a "proper" leased line extortionately expensive, so ISDN was the best practical option until we moved.
----
[1] or 33k6 when I forced it to use that standard to get the faster upstream rate
[2] always on, fixed addresses, faster, didn't drop if a sparrow farted nearby, …
[3] the link we had there did get over-contended at times, but not as much as you might think as this was before connections were available on dorms so Pele had to head to a computer room to get online so if I did get lower than ISDN performance it was likely due to the other end or peering limitations between