hone line. The industry is working to establish a wireless upstream path, but a viable solution is at least two years away (Clark 1999). Cable modems are the wave of the future. Of all the current broadband technologies, cable modems offer the most benefits. Cable modems are simple to operate, do not require a great deal of extraneous hardware, offer the fastest connection speeds, and are the least expensive of all the alternatives. There are some disadvantages to cable modems and cable data systems, but there are solutions to these disadvantages. Just as computers have already done, networking will become a large part of everyday life. Better networking means having more speed, and having more speed takes having more bandwidth, and cable data networks provide that bandwidth. As more people begin to use cable modems, the MSOs will have to upgrade the capacity of the system. This means they will have increase the fiber-optic portions of the HFC networks. As the fiber-optic portions of the MSOs HFC networks grow larger, fiber-optic cable will get closer and closer to the home. Cable modems are the harbinger of things to come because they will drive the need for fiber-optic to the home. Fiber-optic to the home is only a matter of time, and when this happens the Internet will become even bigger than anyone has imagined. ReferencesBarnes, B., Feinberg, B. (1997). Cable modems burn up the wires. C/Net. [No pagination] Retrieved September 16, 1999 from the World Wide Web://http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Techno/Cablemodems/index.htmlBrownstein, M. (1997, October). Batter up for broadband. Byte. [No pagination]. Retrived September 16, 1999 from the World Wide Web://http://www.byte.com/art/9710/sec5/art5Clark, D. D. (1999, October). High-speed data races home. Scientific American, 94-99.Halfhill, T. R. (1996, September). Break the bandwidth barrier. Byte. [No pagination]. Retrived September 16, 1999 from the World Wi...
