When was the peak of BBSing? December 1993? or earlier reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thesecretdave · 2020-12-20 15:25 Hard to say. I think it depends on region and your age. For me, it was 1995 (UK) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vga256 · 2020-12-20 15:32 This. It peaked locally in 94 (Canada), right before the Internet drew away almost every board. By 96, 90% of them were gone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bwave1 · 2020-12-20 16:35 I'd say late 1994. Mid 1995 people started using clunky ways to get on Internet. And it exploded in 1996. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- psiglin1556 · 2020-12-20 16:50 93-94 was great and even up to early 2k I was still getting 100+ calls a day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- z3roOne · 2020-12-20 17:02 FYI I ran a wildcat board from 1991 to 1995 in Chicago, IL. I know the low cost rockwell chip /14.4 v.32bis modems in 1991 and also the release of Wildcat 3.0 in 1991 were definitely a catalyst to bbs's becoming more popular. I also remember in fall of 1993 Hayes decided they couldn't wait another year for the v.34 28.8 standard to come out so they went their own way and made their own interim standard, the V.FC 28.8 modem. That was a game changer as it doubled the speed of modems. I remember getting in on the sysop deal on that one and I also remember downloading Doom in December 1993 at a blazing fast 28.8kbps. Initially reflecting back I thought that maybe that was the peak but doing a little bit more research Mustang software didn't release Wildcat 4 until spring of 1994? somehow I thought this was earlier. 1994 was mustang software's best year as they sold 15000 copies of wildcat. (1993 they sold 11000). So peak BBS must have been towards the end of 1994? maybe just after v.34 was finally ratified in September 1994? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- psiglin1556 · 2020-12-20 18:04 Now maybe 5-10 a day for a good day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2020-12-20 18:24 For me, peak was 1984-1986. It was all so new and the growth was explosive. BBSes got bigger and better after that but started losing their charm. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2020-12-20 18:50 From my perspective, 1994. 1995 was when the Internet came along to the masses. I actually got on the Internet in 1990 in college, before it was a household word. I had never even heard of it before college! But by 1995, it was a household word. A culmination of several factors made that happen. Faster computers, faster modems, and Windows 95 with its built in TCP/IP stack that had a built in dialer. And finally people were beginning to realize that there was a market out there and was relatively cheap enough to get a T1 and some phone lines and modems to make it happen. I started my BBS in the summer of 1993, and by 1994 it had really taken off. I moved to another town in 1995 and the BBS scene was limited but around. By the end of 1995, it had started to die off. 1996 it was almost dead. And in 2000 I was the last one with a dial up line. I killed it by the end of 2000. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnu2tux · 2020-12-20 19:02 I agree with most - it was around 94-95 in the UK, however I was still receiving calls as late as '99. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wintrmte · 2020-12-21 04:39 Here in the west US, I would say from 1985 to 1992. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Exciterusa · 2020-12-21 07:58 Residential internet didn't come about in my area until 1996. From 91 till then BBS's were booming. Even for a couple years afterwards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JeromeK99 · 2020-12-22 06:37 I would have to say the mid 80s. During that time I lived in the metropolitan area of Los Angeles. There were hundreds of boards to choose from. Every major 8-bit micro had a large community of specialized boards to choose from. By 1990, the entire scene was a shell of its former self. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nickmackechnie · 2020-12-22 12:14 The Trashcan BBS is still online (since 1988)... http://bbs.thenet.gen.nz ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2020-12-31 09:42 >It peaked locally in 94 (Canada), right before the Internet drew away almost every board. By 96, 90% of them were gone. My last login (Detroit, MI area) was in 1995. I was already connecting to the internet years before through the University of Michigan and using the Veronica search engine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2020-12-31 09:47 Still, it was always a niche thing. Everyone thought I was an oddball computer nerd for BBS'ing. It is a whole different thing from the internet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucid_au · 2020-12-31 09:58 In Australia it was 1995-ish. After that, people started moving across to the Internet in more substantial numbers, although it was a slower move here than it was in other parts of the world due to our slower speeds and expensive dial-up accounts. By the late 90's, though, there were inexpensive unlimited dialup plans in abundance, and some people started to get HFC cable internet, which sent BBS's on the path to being the niche retro tech they are today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- quentinnuk · 2021-01-05 22:47 For me it was the early to mid 80s. Fido was revolutionary when it came out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2021-01-08 14:07 As others have said, 1994 appears to have been the peak in the U.S. The exact number of BBSs in the U.S. was probably somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000. Here are a couple references to support that: http://bbslist.textfiles.com/support/statistics.html The graph in the above link shows the peak around 1994 with 45,000 BBSs total. A 1994 InfoWorld Magazine article titled "Sysops are reaping the benefits in the wake of a BBS explosion" estimates 60,000 BBSes in the United States that serve 17 million users (September 5, 1994 issue Volume 16, number 36, page 52; link: https://tinyurl.com/yypergtk). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- psiglin1556 · 2021-01-11 15:40 Oh and you can get to mine by telnet. bbs.memphistw.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ykkl · 2021-03-04 01:26 This post could have been written by me. Same years. Any chance you were at Lehigh University? We had Internet but the BBS scene was big, too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2021-03-04 09:41 No, I went to another university. However in the early 90s we did have a 19200 baud serial connection to the university computers. I had accounts on a couple of them, so that was my connection to the Internet. This was 1993 or so. Later on this became the first Ethernet connections, then every dorm room had them. As far as BBSes, the town had BBSes so I had to dial out to the town. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gstandard00 · 2021-03-21 03:38 1994 probably makes sense for peak in Australia. That was when I first started out on the internet with prepaid accounts. I would have stopped regular BBSing around 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- paladine01 · 2021-04-17 02:52 What years at Lehigh? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ykkl · 2021-04-17 04:21 I was only there a year, 1990-91.