Cellular phones are not much different from the old dial-up modems that are still found in many computers.

Since Knapp only had a 56k dial-up modem, he decided to transfer the songs to someone with a lot of bandwidth who could host them.

The DSL service would offer connection speeds many times faster than today's fastest dial-up modems for a monthly fee of $49.95 plus a onetime setup fee of $150.

Worse, the distance from Earth restricts the bandwidth of data transmissions to that of an old 128-kilobyte dial-up modem, meaning that it can take up to a week to send a panoramic picture back.

Ms. Wintz, a real estate agent who lives in Pryor, Okla., about 40 miles northeast of Tulsa, uses a standard dial-up modem to connect through her local Internet service provider.

If your dial-up modem has recently begun to behave differently, check your settings.

But if all of your neighbors have cable modems, things can slow down so much that you might actually yearn to have your dial-up modem back.

But things really fell apart when Mr. Laemmel continued the interview through a second computer linked to the Internet through a standard dial-up modem.

Michael Oswald, an electrical engineering student, was taken aback by the difference between the 1-Meg and his old, conventional dial-up modem: "I was expecting it to be fast but not this quick.

Without a high-speed link, streaming audio is plagued by pauses and glitches, and downloading a symphony can take hours with a conventional dial-up modem.