AI & Technical question
What has changed since the 1990s (days of AOL) to make the internet faster?
- AI & Technical
- Easy
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What this question tests
Tests basic technical fluency in infrastructure evolution, naming the concrete changes behind faster internet since dial-up.
How to approach it
- Name the access-layer shift: dial-up modems, around 56 kbps, gave way to broadband, cable, DSL and now fiber, delivering orders of magnitude more bandwidth.
- Explain the protocol and hardware improvements: faster routers and switches, and protocol upgrades like HTTP/2 and now HTTP/3 reducing request overhead.
- Cover content delivery networks: caching content at edge servers physically closer to users instead of every request traveling to one distant origin server.
- Mention compression and modern codecs, like efficient image and video formats, reducing the actual data size transferred.
- Note mobile-specific gains: 3G to 4G to 5G cellular upgrades extended this same speed shift beyond fixed-line connections.
What a strong answer includes
- Covers multiple independent layers, access, protocol, CDN, compression, not just one factor like faster cables.
- Names concrete technologies, CDNs and HTTP/2, rather than a vague better-technology answer.
- Extends the answer to mobile networks, showing the shift wasn't limited to home broadband.
Common mistakes
- Naming only faster cables or one factor while ignoring protocol and CDN improvements.
- Giving a vague answer like the internet got faster without naming any specific technology.
Likely follow-up questions
- Which of these changes had the biggest impact on perceived page load speed?
- How does 5G change this picture further?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 1: Foundations: the model and the decisions it forces on you
- Chapter 8: Evals: define good and make the number defensible
- Chapter 6: Agents and agentic architecture