What would you say is the definitive soundtrack to your youth? Is it a favorite album or perhaps the ambient sounds of summer, like bicycle wheels rolling over or a chorus of cicadas? For me, it is undoubtedly the nostalgic scream of a dial-up modem.

Strap 12 of those together, and you’ve really got something special—as YouTube channel The Serial Port recently demonstrated. This self-described ‘virtual museum’ showcases tech from yesteryear, this time exploring Multilink Point to Point Protocol. Dating back to 1994, this far from widely used tech allowed users with too many modems on their hands to combine multiple connections into one, potentially doubling their internet speed.

So, why did The Serial Port then strap 12 dial-up modems together, specifically? To utilize Multilink PPP and attempt to stream YouTube over multiple 56 Kbps internet connections. After some calculations, the creators found they needed at least 182,286 bits per second to watch a video at 240p resolution without buffering.

This Multilink PPP experiment required considerable infrastructure setup, including a Cisco IAD for the necessary phone lines plus appropriate hardware. Initial tests began on an IBM NetVista A21i from 2001, though its Windows ME OS dials modems one at a time, rather than simultaneously.

The channel’s hosts faced practical challenges attempting to install serial ports to test additional modems and eventually moved to an IBM ThinkCenter A50 from 2004, a machine now more than two decades old.

This period is more recent than one might think, with AOL discontinuing its dial-up internet service only this year. Researchers have shown that fiber optic speeds can be 3.5 million times faster than average US home broadband. While 12 dial-up modems strapped together is an impractical setup in today’s context, the sounds they produce are truly a nostalgic music piece from a bygone era.