WEBVTT - The Death and Rebirth of Earthlink 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.239 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:18.479 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.840 I love all things tech. And previously on tech Stuff, 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.120 Wait now that that doesn't sound hang on what Previously 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:30.600 on tech Stuff we covered the origins of the Internet 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:34.479 service provider earth Link. I talked about how Sky Dayton 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.479 founded the company, which started off with ten modems that 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.519 would connect customers with the Internet at large dial up 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.000 modem systems is what we're talking about here, and then 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.919 how Dayton and his team grew that business by partnering 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:52.479 with other companies to expand service. Earth Link least capacities 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:57.160 from companies like credit card verification Services and other I 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:01.160 s p s to reach across the United States and 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:05.920 then eventually into Canada and then beyond. Now along the way, 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:10.039 Sky would step down as CEO. He handed control over 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:13.600 to Gary Betty, while Dayton would stay on as chairman 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.080 of the board. For a while longer. Earth Link made 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.000 several acquisitions. They bought up a lot of regional, small 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:21.240 I s p s and they grew as a result, 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:25.000 until in nine the company announced it was going to 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:29.720 merge with another company, mind Spring, which was a rival 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:34.000 I SP located out of Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown, And 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.880 in two thousand those two companies became one, and the 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:39.679 merger meant that the new version of earth Link was 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.120 the second largest I s P in America at that point, 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.880 behind America Online. Uh, America Online actually had a pretty 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.760 significant head start in the consumer market. Now, one thing 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.680 I should clarify is that balance of customers, because often 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.080 I find myself thinking of I s p s from 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:02.360 a household customer perspective, because I mean I am I 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:05.080 am an I s P customer like a household customer, 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:07.600 and I'm not actually running a business like that. But 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:12.200 obviously a lot of I s P customers are actually businesses, 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.720 not consumers, not individuals. And earth Link was a leading 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.160 I s P for enterprise customers, meaning earth Link had 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.760 a lot of businesses as their clients. And when you 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.560 look at the consumer market, there were other companies that 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:30.280 were performing much better in that market, like the aforementioned 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.079 America Online as well as Prodigy, which, like America Online, 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:38.320 had begun as an online service provider, which is not 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:40.959 the same thing as an I s P. It's sort 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.840 of a walled garden network. It's not access to the 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.720 Internet at large, but they had also transitioned from that 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:52.919 to an Internet service provider. By two thousand, America Online 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.800 had twenty million subscribers, largely because a o L was 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.480 sending out installation CDs like they were nothing. I mean, 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.480 if you were back around those days, like if you 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.720 were checking your mail, you probably made a few jokes 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.079 about turning a O L c d s into drink 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:15.160 coasters or a mobile for your kid or something, because 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:16.760 it seemed like you would get a couple in the 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.679 mail every week or so. But that kind of strategy 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.200 was actually working, as a o L had around those 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.960 twenty million customers. Earth Link, by contrast, had slightly fewer 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.519 than five million customers, so yeah, there's like a fifteen 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.320 million person gap there. But earth Link also had a 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:37.200 huge number of enterprise customers, so the company was doing 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.200 pretty well from a financial perspective, at least as far 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.080 as revenue. When it came to profit, not so much, 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.480 but that's because earth Link was pouring a lot of 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.840 that money into acquiring other companies and growing, so it 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.560 was kind of a growth engine. But not a profit 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.760 engine at this point. Now, something else was going on 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.880 in the technological world while earth Link was growing. So 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.360 we're gonna be doing some backtracking in this episode because 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.240 there was stuff that I guess technically I could have 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.440 covered in part one, but I really wanted to get 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.520 to that that description of how earth Link and MindSpring 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:15.080 would become the earth Link of the future. But uh, 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:17.000 the thing that we want to go back to right 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.760 now is the ascension of other technologies that allowed for 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.680 internet broadband connectivity, because not only would it create alternatives 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.119 to dial up, it also was tied into what would 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.200 become the major competitor and ultimately the death knell for 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.760 a lot of internet service providers. So earth Link launched 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.159 in the dial up modeme era as it was passing 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:45.360 its peak. So dial up was starting to get to 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.960 the best, the most that it's ever been, and then 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:53.920 it was very slowly starting to decline. Now, dial up 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.400 modems are still very much a thing. They're not gone. 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.160 They exist to this day. So when I talk about 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:01.159 a dial up era, um, I really mean the period 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:05.039 in which that technology was the dominant one. Also, when 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.360 Earthlink launched a state of the art consumer modem which 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.040 gets you the blistering speed of twenty eight point eight 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:15.320 killabits per second. But around the corner was the emergence 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.240 of fifty six kilabits per second modems. Still, other technologies 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.400 would enter the fray and change things, and we were 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.440 about to enter the era of broadband. Now, anyone who 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.080 used an old dial up modem to do something like 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.720 load up a web page knows that it could be 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:34.000 painstakingly slow. If you had a twenty eight point eight 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.080 killabits per second modem and you wanted to log into 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:41.960 a page that had two of images and other stuff 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.520 in it, it would take more than a minute for 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.919 that web page to load on your browser, and a 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.840 lot of early web pages went sparingly on images for 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.000 that reason. So let's say you wanted to do something 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.200 even more intensive, like you wanted to download an MP 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.920 three a song, And for the sake of this exam, 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.360 well we'll say it's an MP three of a song 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.960 that's five megabytes in size. Now, over a twenty eight 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.560 point eight kill abits per second modem, that would take 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:13.120 you about half an hour to download one song. And 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.279 this was the top of the line modem when earth 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.040 Link was launching, and a lot of people were actually 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.880 using modems that had much lower data transfer rates. Even 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.400 when we'd get up to fifty six killa bits per second, 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.479 you'd still be talking about waiting almost fifteen minutes to 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.920 download a single song, and the whole time you're taking 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.039 up a phone line. So some folks like my parents 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.960 would arrange to have a separate phone line specifically for 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.960 the computer modem, which was a good idea because if 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.640 you were using a shared line and somewhere somewhere else 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.200 in the house picked up a phone, it would interrupt 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.400 your connection and you would have to reset, and if 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.520 you were in the middle of a file transfer, you 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.640 might have to start all over again. But as I mentioned, 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.600 there were other technologies that were poised to keep things 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.440 moving along at a faster pace, and one of them 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.040 was a tech that had been in development more as 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:09.160 a method of allowing telephone companies to compete with cable companies, 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.360 not necessarily in the internet space, but in the providing 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.120 of video type space. So this is going to get 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.880 a bit technical, but stick with me. We need a 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:23.360 super quick history of cable television, and I'll be specifically 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:26.640 talking about coaxial cable, though you should know there's also 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.360 fiber optic cable, but that would come much later. Coax 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.880 cable essentially started in the nineteen forties with people who 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.000 couldn't get a broadcast signal at their homes because they 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.880 were just too far away from the center of broadcast 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.120 and the antennas that they were using weren't picking up 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:46.560 a strong enough signal for them to see anything. So 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:51.080 they began to erect antennas in strategic locations, like at 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.600 the top of a hill, and then they would run 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.320 cable from the antennas down to the televisions in the 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:01.560 nearby neighborhoods. Uh. There were enterprising individuals who did this 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:03.440 and set it up as a business. And so their 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.800 business was that they would build the antenna and then 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.240 you would pay them for them to run cable from 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.840 the antenna down to your home. And this was called 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:17.680 community antenna television or ce A TV. That was the 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.000 birth of cable television. People discovered that the cable signal 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.440 would weaken the further it has to travel. So if 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.480 you lived a far distance from that hill where the 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.320 antenna was, and you just ran cable from the antenna 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.120 to the TV you still might not get something that 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:38.400 is watchable, but you could put in amplifiers so the 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.640 signal would come into the amplifier. The amplifier would boost 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.320 the signal and push it further down the line towards 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.600 the televisions. You might have several amplifiers on a single line. However, 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.559 amplifiers could also introduce noise into the signal, and thus 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.520 that could get boosted as well. And cable systems weren't 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:01.080 terribly reliable, so they weren't incredibly popular. They were just 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.559 seen as the only alternative to no television at all 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:06.720 if you happen to live outside of a broadcast area, 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.600 so they were better than nothing. But it wasn't until 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.520 the nineteen seventies that advancements in technology and process would 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.440 improve the experience and cable companies the way we know 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:21.600 them today would become viable. The coaxial cable is an 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.200 important part of this. If you were able to see 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.280 the layers in a coaxial cable, you would see that 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.360 at the very core of it, there is a conductive material, 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:34.760 copper wire. Surrounding that copper wire is a layer of 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:39.920 dielectric insulating material, and surrounding that is an outer conductor 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.360 called the shield. So the outer and inner conductor are 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.719 both aligned in the same direction, along the same axis. 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:50.880 Think of a small straw nestled inside a larger straw, 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.200 and that's why it's called a coaxial cable because they're 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:58.520 both along the same axis. Information travels through coaxial cables 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.079 along a carrier way, which then is modulated. You can 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.520 modulate it by its amplitude, by its frequency, and by 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:09.559 its phase. This gets into the electromagnetic spectrum, which is 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:13.360 the range of all types of electromagnetic radiation. From super 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.319 long radio waves that are miles and miles long two 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.440 super short gamma rays. We can describe these waves in 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:25.160 terms of wavelength, how long those waves are, or frequency. 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.240 Frequency refers to the number of wavelengths that pass a 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.920 given point within a second. We measure frequency and hurts, 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.200 with one hurts being one wave per second. Okay, so 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.680 how does cable TV send all those channels of content simultaneously? 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.760 How come they don't all get mixed up? Well, the 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.240 word channel is the key. A channel is actually a 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:52.720 band of frequencies that is reserved to a specific television 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:56.920 source like MTV. I mean, why not MTV I want 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:01.240 my MTV. So in the US, AT channel consists of 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:06.640 a bandwidth of spectrum within that that cable. You know, 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:12.240 the cable can hold a certain spectrum of frequencies. Well, 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:14.960 a channel is a bandwidth of six mega hurts, so 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:19.080 it's six mega hurts wide across the available spectrum that 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.000 the cable can carry. And within that six mega hurts 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.720 band is all the information of that specific channel of television. 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:29.280 That six mega hurts belongs to MTV. But you move 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.679 over another six mega hurts to the next band, and 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.480 you're at a different channel, and your cable box acts 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:41.360 as a tuner. It switches over to accept signals from 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.559 a specific band of frequencies. So it goes from one 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:48.240 specific six mega hurts band to tune into whichever channel 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.720 you want to watch. And the capacity of coaxial depends 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.439 on a few factors, but generally we're talking about the 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.920 ability to carry more than one hundred six mega hurts 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:03.559 channels on analog signals that can travel across a coax cable. Now, 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:06.679 note I said analog things switch up when you go 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.679 to digital. Now, the reason I went into all of 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.559 that is twofold one is because the telephone companies were 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:17.960 rather jealous of cable companies. Telephone companies already had wired 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:23.200 infrastructure laid out across entire countries. If a phone company 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:27.080 could deliver content the way cable companies did, it would 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:31.760 represent an enormous jump in revenue. Because remember, once you've 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:34.760 built out your infrastructure so it so it meets, you know, 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.119 the vast majority of of individuals who could be customers, 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:42.760 you've hit market saturation. You can't really grow anymore, so 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:48.200 you have limited ways of increasing your revenue. And we 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.760 typically reward companies that show growth year over year. It's 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.240 not just it's not just good enough to perform well, 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.040 you need to grow. The other reason is that later 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.200 on in the two thousand, we'd see the rise of 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.480 cable internet connectivity, which would make a huge impact on 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.800 the I s P industry. But first let's go back 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:10.720 over and look at the phone companies. So the telephonic 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.360 infrastructure relied on what are called twisted pair cables, which 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.400 doesn't mean that they're deviant or anything. They're not that 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.240 kind of twisted. They're literally twisted together. This is something 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.520 that dates all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:30.240 himself twisted pair cables consists of pairs of wires, So 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.480 you get two wires, they form a circuit that's capable 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:37.240 of transmitting data, and these two wires are twisted together, 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:42.160 which in turn shields those wires from interference also known 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.880 as cross talk, from other pairs of wires which are 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.640 also twisted, and a cable is made up of lots 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.560 of these twisted pairs, all bundled together. By the nineteen eighties, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.800 researchers at telephone companies were working hard to figure out 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.400 how to deliver more information over telephone wires in an 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.000 effort to come pete against cable companies. It was possible 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.400 to transmit data like video across these lines. There were 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:11.120 television studios that we're using twisted pair cables to send 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.480 video from a studio to a broadcast area. But you 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.280 couldn't do it with the same amount of throughput that 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:20.600 you could manage with cable that twisted wires just couldn't 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.400 carry as much data per unit of time, And a 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:25.920 big part of the problem was that having the same 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:30.800 bandwidth for upstream and downstream transmissions, in other words, having 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.400 equal amounts of capacity to send stuff up and to 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.480 bring stuff down would cause problems, and an engineer and 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:43.440 scientist with Belcore named Joseph lech Lighter would find a 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.320 big breakthrough. Lech Lighter found that if you offset the 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:52.080 upstream and downstream bandwidth allocation, meaning you'd allow more data 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.920 to travel in one direction versus the other in that 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.640 same amount of time, you could dramatically increase the overall 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:01.720 amount of information that could travel over those lines. So 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.440 it's called a symmetric meaning the upstream and downstream band 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.000 what's are not symmetrical, and because most users tend to 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.960 pull down more information than they need to upload, the 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.720 downstream side would get the most love, and to this 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.640 day it's pretty common to see a much higher download 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.520 rate than an upload rate, though it's not always about 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.440 the same process that Leclighter found, but that that's not 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.200 really important and it would take about two decades for 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.640 lec Lighter's work to have a real practical application. It 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.080 would be called a d s L for a symmetric 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.120 digital subscriber line. Most of the time we just referred 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.560 to it as DSL A, and not all DSL is asymmetric. 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.360 There's also symmetrical DSL, but a lot of people just 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:52.280 shorten it to DSL anyway. Now, a DSL connection allowed 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.800 for much greater data transfer rates than what you could 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:58.600 accomplish with a regular dial up modem. The dial up modems, 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.520 again they maxed out it fifty six bits per second, 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.320 but DSL could reach speeds of more than ten times that, 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.840 and over time, as technology improved, it would reach speeds 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.640 of up to one hundred megabits per second. Now, if 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.960 you listen to my episode about Section two thirty and 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.400 what that's all about, you've heard me talk about the 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:23.280 Telecommunications Act of If you recall, I mentioned that this 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.720 Act was a truly huge piece of legislation and section 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.400 to thirty is just a tiny, tiny piece of it. 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.320 And Section to thirty, for those who don't know, is 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.640 a passage that grants widespread legal immunity to Internet platforms 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:40.080 for stuff that people post to those platforms. So, in 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.760 other words, it means that if someone posts illegal content 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.520 on a platform, the platform itself isn't held accountable for 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.680 that act. But Section to thirty was such a tiny 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:53.360 piece of the overall picture that I think it's safe 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:57.200 to say most politicians weren't really focusing on it. One 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.280 thing the Act did was open up the possibility for 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.280 both the cable industry and the telephone industry to get 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:07.280 into the business of being Internet service providers, considering these 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:11.160 industries already had massive infrastructures built into the fabric of 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:15.080 the modern society, and that technologies like DSL and cable 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.000 would mean they would eventually be able to offer up 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:20.480 faster service than dial up I s p s could. 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:23.040 It would mean that there would be some fierce competition 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:27.520 in the space, and that companies that were once bulletproof, 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:29.920 like America Online and earth Link would have a more 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.280 uncertain future. When we come back, I'll talk about how 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:35.360 all this would converge and what would happen to earth 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.480 Link in the meantime, But first let's take a quick break. 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.520 So throughout the nineties, as telephone and cable companies worked 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.720 to create an economically feasible means of entering the I 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.080 s P industry now that they had the green light 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.560 to do so from the US government, dial up remained 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.920 the primary way most people were connecting to the Internet, 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.760 and companies like earth Link we're doing well, but there 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.520 was a ticking clock element going on. No one was 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.320 certain when the broadband era would really take over from 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.119 dial up, but it seemed pretty much a guarantee that 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.000 that is what was going to happen. But in those 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.880 intervening years, earth Link kept making big moves. So back 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:22.040 in the nineties before the mind Spring merger, earth Link 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.600 continued to make strategic partnerships with companies like sign Net 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.960 or p s i Net, another early I s P 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:33.120 to provide access to more of North America, including Canada, 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.280 and it also signed a deal with Microsoft. Earth Link 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.440 would provide customers with the company's browser Internet Explorer, much 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.240 as they had done with Netscape Navigator earlier. In return, 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.240 Microsoft included earth Link in a suite of pre installed 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.479 applications on Windows and I cannot stress to you how 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:56.359 valuable that would be for a company to have your app, 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:02.399 your portal to your service in looted as a native 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.520 application on the most popular operating system in the world. 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:11.000 It is beyond valuable. Earth Link also began to offer 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.199 I S d N service. Now, this was sort of 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:16.240 a step between the normal phone lines being used with 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:21.320 modems and the upcoming DSL lines. It provided faster data 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.199 transfer rates, but it never really caught on in a 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.760 huge way, particularly since DSL would outperform I s D 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.960 and benchmarks, So it was kind of a stop gap 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.200 measure that came a little too late. So no one, 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.840 not not that many people really adopted it. In out 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.399 in California, earth Link signed a deal with Charter Communications 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.440 and a cable company, and the partnership would be one 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:47.520 of the early ones to provide cable internet service to 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:51.399 a particular region. So this wasn't nationwide or anything. It 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.879 was for a very specific market, and it did involve 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:57.400 cable modems. So this was an early example of that 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:01.320 earth Link executives were clearly thinking ahead because even as 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.560 modems speeds were switching over to fifty bits per second, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.000 they were looking at technologies that were clearly going to 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.480 be faster and would replace dial up service within within 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.240 a few years. So now it's time to talk a 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.400 little bit about how cable modems work. Now. I mentioned 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.680 that television channels each take up six mega hurts of 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.679 a band of frequencies across the available spectrum of frequencies 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.320 that can travel down a coaxial cable. With cable modems, 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:33.320 the downstream Internet traffic to customers likewise takes up six 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:36.840 mega hurts band of frequencies. Upstream is a little different. 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.720 Instead of taking up a whole channel, it actually only 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.119 uses a two mega hurts band of frequencies, so you 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.520 get six mega hurts width down two mega hurts with 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.560 up and since most people are downloading way more than 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.280 their uploading, this really isn't a problem for most people. 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.680 At the provider end of this system, you've got your 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.080 cable modem termination system. At the customer end, you've got 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:01.840 your cable modem, and that cable modem has a few 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.080 components that allow you to access the Internet. First, there's 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.560 the tuner. This component tunes the modem to the specific 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.840 channel that's carrying the Internet signal as opposed to channel 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.640 carrying C A TV signals. The incoming signal then goes 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.399 to the next component, a demodulator. Now, the most common 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:26.000 demodulators have four functions. A quadrature amplitude modulation or q 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:30.399 a M demodulator takes an encoded radio frequency signal and 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:33.200 turns it into a simple signal that can be processed 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.160 by the analog to digital converter or a D converter. 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.040 The converter's job, it's in the name, really, it's to 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.680 take an analog signal that is a continuous signal, which 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.560 in this case is an electric signal with varying voltage, 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:52.359 and then transforms that continuous signal into digital information, which 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.320 means it turns into a series of zeros and ones. Next, 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:59.960 you've got your error correction module. This module analyzes the 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.680 signal and compares it against a known standard to identify 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:09.320 any potential errors that happened in transmission. Frequently we're dealing 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.520 with data that is an IMPEG format for the purposes 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:15.439 of grouping data into network frames. IMPEG is not just 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.840 for movies and music. It's it's a kind of a 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:25.600 data arrangement strategy. So there's also an IMPEG synchronizer in 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.400 cable modems, which really is just there to make sure 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:30.840 that the frames are all in the correct order. You 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:32.840 can kind of think of it as being responsible for 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:34.879 making sure all the puzzle pieces are going to the 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:39.040 right place to make the full picture. Likewise, the modem 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:41.840 also has a modulator to take the data you're sending 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:45.040 back upstream and convert it into a radio frequency signal 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:48.800 that can travel over the cable connection. Another component of 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:53.840 cable modems is the Media Access control or MAC address Now, 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.840 this is pretty much a standard part of all networking equipment, 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:00.760 and that includes devices that connect to works, and it 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.040 serves as a way for these devices to differentiate themselves 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:06.920 on a local network. So we're really talking about local 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:12.040 networks here, not Internet. But it's important because otherwise you 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:14.560 wouldn't have a way for the network to send the 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:17.639 correct information to the correct device. If you have a 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:20.359 bunch of different devices connected to the same local area network, 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:22.040 they have to have a way to say this is 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:25.200 who I am, so that the right data goes to them. 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:28.720 All devices connecting to a network have a MAC address, 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:30.880 and it's how we make sure the right data goes 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:32.879 to the right device. Otherwise you'd have an issue with 0:23:32.960 --> 0:23:36.199 multiple devices connected to a local area network as a 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:39.080 further connection to the Internet at large, and everything would 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:41.840 be mixed up and that would be terrible. Cable modems 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.480