and you could always tell if you were going to connect or not and the quality of the connection based purely on slight variations of the sound. if it sounded “off” I would disconnect before completely connecting and reconnect cause I knew I was about to get a shit connection.
Luckily for me growing up. AOL was abit more reliable but not by much though! Honestly as someone who had dial-up in a world where high speed internet existed. I was really jealous!