Twenty five years ago today, the University of Melbourne connected to the University of Hawaii through a fragile 56 kilobit per second satellite link. The connection was successful and is now recognised as Australia’s first international internet connection.
“We [Melbourne University] became a national hub,” said Professor Justin Zobel, the head of Computer Science at Melbourne University.
“We would dial into the US and we would download all the email messages and news postings and software that were available. And that would get picked up by other Australian computers.
“This traffic grand totalled at about a megabyte a day,” he said, laughing.
“By the late 80s though, people were going into the US, they were seeing the internet in action and they wanted to be part of it. And this is why we established a connection into Hawaii in 1989.”
Full interview with computer scientist Justin Zobel from Melbourne University
To celebrate the past 25 years, we look back on some memorable internet moments in Australia.
1) Dial-up modems
Who could forget that dial-up sound, and fighting your siblings for the family phone? RIP dial-up modem.
A 56K dial-up modem.
2) ICQ /MSN/AOL
Before Twitter, Facebook, Tindr, Snapchat and text messages, we had instant messaging websites ICQ, MSN and AOL. ASL, anyone?
3) Switching from Encarta to search engines
Researching for a school project, university assignment or work report seems impossible these days without Google. How did we ever manage to get anything done in the 90s with Microsoft Encarta?
Remember this?
4) YouTube stars
From Natalie Tran’s Community Channel (1.54 million subscribers), beauty expert Chloe Morello to Australian-Korean singers Jayesslee (1.75 million subscribers), and that GoPro man who filmed himself “fighting off” a great white shark, there’s no shortage of Australian YouTube stars.
5) Illegal downloads, especially GoT episodes
In April, Australia accounted for 11.6 per cent of the total torrent site downloads of the Game of Thrones' fourth season premiere, according to data gathered by TorrentFreak.
The piracy tracking website also stated that Melbourne fans were the largest downloaders, accounting for 3.2 per cent of the total, followed by Athens and Sydney. Brisbane and Perth also made the top 10 city by city breakdown.
The new episode from the HBO series was downloaded more than half a million times in half a day, according to TorrentFreak, crashing the HBO Go service.
Its popularity also inspired a series of parodies from SBS.
Actor Finn Jones plays Ser Loras Tyrell in the new season of Game of Thrones. (AAP)
6) Slow internet speeds: Australia ranked 44th in the world
Australian internet sped up by 27 per cent in 2013, but the country dropped several places in global rankings.
Average Australian connection speeds increased by 27 per cent in 2013 to reach 5.8 megabits per second (Mbps) in the December quarter, according to Akamai Technologies' latest State of the Internet report.
But the country dropped three places in global speed rankings to 44th, beaten by regional neighbours Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan.
New Zealand placed 45th with average speeds of 5.3 Mbps, while South Korean maintained its No. 1 ranking with average speeds of 21.9 Mbps.
And according to ComputerWorld, we have finally beaten Mongolia when it comes to internet download speeds.
When did you first discover the internet? What memories do you have of the internet over the past 25 years? Tell us in the comments below.
