@Home cable modem systems

[Thomas Grant Edwards]

See URL http://www.home.net/home2/speed.html

Some tidbits:

       @Home is a high-speed
       network that provides real-time multimedia news,
       information, entertainment and advertising content, access
       to the Internet, e-mail and other services to consumers via
       cable systems and their personal computers. The Mountain
       View, Calif.-based company is a joint venture between
       (between Tele-Communications Inc. and Kleiner Perkins
       Caufield & Byers )venture capital firm.

       The @Home network will provide consumers with a
       significant increase in speed and quality over current online
       connections. The service will use a customized version of
       the popular Netscape browser that will run on most
       Microsoft Windows, Windows 95, Macintosh OS and
       UNIX personal computers. @Home will employ an open
       platform architecture that will make its features available to
       the widest possible number of users and content providers.
       The @Home network will operate over a high-speed
       backbone and existing cable systems and will be linked to
       home computers via cablemodems and standard Ethernet
       connections.

       @Home will include a wide variety of content. In addition
       to providing connections to the global Internet, the World
       Wide Web and e-mail, the service will enable content
       providers to create multimedia content that takes
       advantage of the high-speed network, as well as extensive
       local news and information.

       Deployment of the @Home service will begin in 1996 in
       select national markets, starting with Sunnyvale, Calif. The
       monthly charge for @Home is expected to be $30-$50 for
       unlimited use of basic services.

	...

       Cable modems are almost 700 times faster than 14.4
       modems and nearly 80 times faster than ISDN
       connections. Cable modems do not require an extra phone
       line, and they eliminate the time and potential trouble
       involved in dialing a service. Cable-based Internet
       services offer an even richer multimedia experience than
       CD-ROM technology, including real-time delivery and
       updating of content. And cable offers a direct connection to
       the online world--when you turn on the computer, you are
       on the network.

       @Home's network is based on a distributed model that
       makes extensive use of caching and replication to minimize
       traffic on the system's backbone and maintain high levels of
       speed. @Home will operate its own global network
       infrastructure connecting to the Internet at multiple
       locations. The @Home backbone will connect regional
       data centers together via a multi-megabit switched data
       system. These regional centers would serve limited
       geographic areas, such as individual cities, and would be
       connected to local servers located at cable system
       headends. @Home users would be connected to the
       headends via local area networks operating over the cable
       system, which is a two-way hybrid fiber-optic/coaxial
       cable configured asymmetrically. Many cable companies
       have upgraded their systems to handle such two-way
       connections or are in the process of doing so.

       At the home, the service would arrive over the same cable
       that delivers television signals, which would not be affected
       by the addition of data services. The cable modem, which
       would be supplied by the cable company, would be
       connected to the subscriber's computer with a standard
       10-Base-T Ethernet cable. Many computers now include
       Ethernet connections or can easily be upgraded. The
       software required to use the service would be provided to
       the subscriber by @Home and will include a TCP/IP stack
       and Internet browser software with built-in e-mail and
       multimedia capabilities.