How John Cioffi Gave Life to the Internet Through the Broadband

Most of us cannot imagine a world without the internet now. We depend on it for everything from reading this article to shopping for groceries. However, forty years ago, the internet barely existed with the World Wide Web years away. Since then we have come a long way to technology such as 5G and crypto-currency, thanks to the internet. For most of this, we have engineer John Cioffi to thank. He realized that the copper wires used as phone lines could supply fast data to homes. This move made it possible for homes to get the internet without creating new networks. Years later, Joseph Lechleider turned that dream into a reality, and modern broadband came to be. Here’s a look at how those two men singlehandedly revolutionized modern-day internet and our lives.

What John Cioffi Did

Cioffi realized while at American Bell Laboratories in the 1970s, that someday the entire world would use the internet. However, making this affordable wasn’t an easy task. To make the process affordable, he imagined using copper telephone wires which have been around since a hundred years earlier. He moved to Stanford University by the end of the ’70s and began working on this concept. He tried to fit hundreds of data channels alongside phone conversations without causing disturbances. Cioffi named the technology DMT or Discrete Multitone. However, the high interference of the lines became a problem. So he built a device to switch data between channels to prevent this, creating the first broadband modem.

Joseph Lechleider’s Contribution

Cioffi’s broadband modem lowered the interference but not for high rate data sending. By then, Joseph Lechleider was working as an engineer at Bell Labs which had become Bellcore. He discovered that sending large data in one direction and smaller in the opposite could solve this problem. Hence, this process became the basis for the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology. ADSL technology works great for people who don’t need to upload much data.

Broadband becomes Universal

Cioffi founded Amati in 1992 to build broadband modems, while companies such as BT began working on ADSL technology. Meanwhile, customers began using dial-up modems to access the internet via their phone lines. Since DSL required signal processors, they were too expensive to implement early on. However, as the 2000s rolled in, microchips became more affordable and internet connections became over a hundred times faster.

Cioffi then successfully worked on Dynamic Spectrum Management to make the transmission even faster. Soon enough, John Cioffi became the Father of DSL, with over 100 patents in the field. He works on projects to improve internet speeds and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Lechleider died in 2015 becoming inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013.

Continued Success

Cioffi also served as a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, supervising over 100 Ph.D. students over two decades. He left Stanford in 1991 to found Amati Corporation, building the world’s first DSL modem. The modem soon became a gold-standard as it was 4 times faster than its competitors, also being the first to transmit live television via a phone line. He sold Amati Communications to Texas Instrument for $440 million three years after taking it public in 1995. Cioffi returned to Stanford, to research on Dynamic Spectrum Management and vectored VDSLs, which will soon be launched in the US.

In 2003, Cioffi founded ASSIA which now has over 80 million worldwide subscribers and retired from Stanford six years later. The company makes software and hardware for companies involved in providing users high-speed Internet services. His wife works as the Executive Vice President owing to her keen sense of people, and management skills. His design for the VDSL powers almost 98% of the 500 million DSL connections the world now uses.

DSL accounts for more than 70% of the world’s broadband, more than even cable and fiber combined. ASSIA controls 90% of the U.S. market with regards to DSL management software, with its product making about $100 million annually for its users. The company began with three people, and by 2011 had over 170 employees. With the DSL industry has grown to one worth over $120 billion worldwide, it goes without saying that we have a lot to thank Cioffi for.