Summary

“How would our lives change,” wondered entrepreneur Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard in 1987, “if everyday people had a stable, high-speed data connection to the Internet?” While he wasn’t the first to imagine a world of digital connectivity, Yassini-Fard was in the vanguard by creating the cable modem, which transformed residential Internet access from its slow, frustrating dial-up origins to a fast, always-on, and extraordinary connectivity tool by harnessing the existing infrastructure of the residential cable network.

The Accidental Network tells the untold story of the invention of the cable modem by the small, struggling tech company LANcity in the early 1990s, illustrating how Yassini-Fard overcame a cascade of technical challenges, investment community naysayers, and unnerving business obstacles to create the cable modem technology that has changed the way billions of individuals across the globe now manage their daily lives and commerce. The cable modem delivered broadband, with speeds ranging from 1 megabit per second (Mbps) to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps)—a big leap from the dial-up speeds of 56 kilobits per second (Kbps). This hardware, along with the adoption of the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard, engendered the modern revolution in broadband internet access. Shunned by venture capitalists and surviving on a shoestring budget, Yassini-Fard and his colleagues were willing to bet it all (including the deed for Yassini-Fard’s home) on the creation of the cable modem and the pursuit of its widescale global adoption.

The Accidental Network is both a valuable history of technology innovation and an engrossing account of business conducted at high speed. The book details Yassini-Fard’s journey from electrical engineer to entrepreneur in the race to secure technology partners, create a wholly new marketplace, and convince cable industry executives that there was money to be made in transmitting data to households at a time when skepticism about the reach of personal computing was the norm.

Written from the lens of an Iranian immigrant and WVU alum known as “the father of the cable modem,” this book reveals how a perfect storm of forces—the rise of cable television, the onset of the personal computing era, a growing awareness of the Internet for information and commerce, and the development of the cable modem—converged to usher in the age of broadband access.

Contents

Foreword by John Chambers

Prologue

1 American Dream

2 Wired Nation

3 Vision Quest 

4 It’s a Deal

5 The Missing Link

6 When Doves Fly

7 Death Star

8 Puppy Love

9 Screen Wars

10 Rose Gardening

11 Wicked Fast

12 Father Figure

Epilogue: A New Alphabet

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Authors

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, the “father of the cable modem,” is a technology entrepreneur, engineer, investor, and philanthropist. He is the founder and managing director of the YAS Foundation, a philanthropic enterprise supporting initiatives across academia, cultural connection, medical research, and scholarship. He is executive director of the Broadband Center of Excellence at the University of New Hampshire.

Stewart Schley is a journalist who writes about the business of media and telecommunications. He is the founding editor of Cable World magazine.

Reviews

“Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard led the vision for the cable industry that the cable plant could provide Internet to your home. The pioneering work that Rouzbeh and his team did at LANcity was the embodiment of that vision and ultimately led to the creation of DOCSIS. We, the DOCSIS generation, stand on the shoulders of giants, and Rouzbeh and his team were those giants. This book is a fascinating read of life in a startup and compares to great books like The Soul of a New Machine. Rouzbeh’s book shows what you can do with a vision even when all the odds seem against you.”
—John Chapman, former Broadband CTO and Fellow at Cisco