I went to college in 1997 and went from 28.8kbps dialup to a 2.4gbit OC-48. I had no idea how slow the rest of the internet was until I had a better connection than most servers (at the time).
Edit: I was connected to the dorm ethernet via 10mbit NICs. So even with 5 PCs running in my dorm room, we were only using a fraction of the available bandwidth.
I worked for the department that ran student computer labs (before most people started bringing computers to college with them). That's where the real epic lan parties happened. Every time we'd update the desktops we'd celebrate with an all-nighter lan party for staff and friends.
I went to a small charter high school around 2002-3 and their whole education curriculum was on computers. The school principal would do monthly lan parties, then wipe the floor with us teenagers on age of empires 2. I still fear elephant charges.