RoadRunner cablemodem development: beginnings of broadband Internet to the
home
Horseheads Cable Headend, in Elmira, NY
(click on picture for higher resolution image)
It's around May-June 1995. Amazing today that high-speed Internet is so
widespread that no one seems aware of the wonder of it all, the efforts and
tribulations to develop the technology and the services during those early years.
Photo was taken during a visit by Time Warner Cable and Time Inc. executives to
the site of a cablemodem trial in this small town of the Finger Lakes
region. The occasion was the first presentation of the capabilities of "LineRunner
Online".
This early deployment integrated rather rudimentary Zenith cablemodems
with an application and business support system built by HP using HP-UX as a
platform. Content feeds were integrated to receive Pathfinder content from Time
Inc., as well as several local content sites. And service gateways were
available to provide access to online services CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL.
This pioneering trial was the precursor of the complete "Excalibur architecture"
solution, built with contributions from such companies as HP, Toshiba, Motorola, Sun
Microsystems, DEC, Microsoft, Cisco and others, that would be deployed
commercially under the RoadRunner brand starting in 1996. Much of this
technology was contributed and integrated into the industry-standard DOCSIS
solutions we see all over the world today.
Due to the combination of my faulty memory and poor photo resolution I can only
identify some of the people in the picture. In the front row, starting from
the right side:
- Jim Chiddix - Time Warner Cable
- (gap)
- Mario Vecchi - Time Warner Cable/RoadRunner (in grey suit)
- Glen Britt - Time Warner Cable
- Randy Roswell - Elmira Cable Division
- Carl Rossetti - Time Warner Cable (back)
- Walter Isaacson - Time Inc.
- Dick Duncan - Time Inc./RoadRunner (back)
- Paul Sagan - Time Inc.
- (don't recognize)
- (don't recognize)
And two notable contributors should have been in this
picture: Tim Evard (Time Warner Cable/RoadRunner) and Bob Rusak (Time Inc./RoadRunner).
If you recognize and remember other names from the picture, please
send them
to me and I will update the record. Hope you enjoy the memory! Thanks.
Mario Vecchi