I started on 300baud - but never accessed the internet from that so I won't count it in this discussion.

Those things always confuse me. I think 2400 baud modems were like 9600 bps? At least 56k modems were 8000 baud.

no, the other way

2400 were 300 bytes per second

(though it might be that 9600bps worked at the 'official definition' of 2400 baud but nobody advertised it like that)

You seem to be confusing baud and bits per second. Baud is symbols per second. Usually one symbol represents multiple bits. AFAIK in 56k modems one symbol corresponds up to 7 bits.

I am not confusing anything, it was the marketing that was confusing

Of course you're correct and a 56k modem is something like 8k Baud, but in marketing the bigger number usually wins

And up until the 2400bps modems IIRC bauds and bps were interchangeable