September 1996
@Home launches residential cable internet
The @Home Network began selling always-on cable modem internet to households in Fremont, California in September 1996 — the first commercial cable ISPInternet service provider — a company that sells internet access to homes and businesses. rollout.
What it was for
@Home paired cable TV plant with ethernetA wired local networking standard — the dominant way offices and homes connect devices to a LAN. CPE and a national backbone tuned for IPInternet Protocol — the addressing and routing layer that moves packets across networks. — speeds far above dial-up modems. Developers could host home servers, download large SDKs, and browse the growing web without tying up a phone line. Cable operators worldwide copied the model after DOCSIS standardized modems.
Why it's here
@Home was the first mass-market always-on broadband service in the United States.
Why it mattered
It proved cable TV coax could carry consumer internet and set expectations for megabit home access.
What it solved
Dial-up could not deliver always-on, fast enough links for the multimedia web taking shape in the mid-1990s.
Related
- DOCSIS 1.0 cable modem standard releasedMarch 1997
- WorldWideWeb — first web browserDecember 1990