"[...] From January 1995 through July 1997, [Thomas Johannes Obenhuber (born 1955)] served as Vice President, Operations and Engineering at [Genuity Incorporated], a national backbone Internet service provider that he co-started. From July 1990 through January 1995, Mr. Obenhuber worked at Sun Microsystems where he most recently served as Director, System Architecture."

Description

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/019,089, filed May 14, 1996, naming as inventors Thomas Obenhuber and Rodney Joffe, and assigned to the assignee of the instant application. U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/019,089 is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety for all purposes.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to computer networking systems and, more particularly, to systems and methods of providing Internet access to multiple users at a single location.

The Internet is a collection of thousands of computer networks around the globe. Internet usage has grown exponentially since 1993, mainly due to the world wide web (Web) and its electronic mail (e-mail) and web page capabilities. This interconnection of computers is possible because the Internet has adopted a communication standard (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol or TCP/IP) which allows computers with different operating systems to communicate with each other over a network of networks (an "internetwork").

By one estimation, over 8 million computers currently attach to the Internet. An estimated 40 million users worldwide access these computers ("hosts").

Corporations and private users increasingly demand easy, cost-effective, and high-speed (e.g., greater than 1 megabits per second or Mbps) access to public interoperable networks such as the Internet. Around the world, the demand for a technical infrastructure for building private networks on top of public networks also is increasing.

As the number of users on the Internet increases, so too do the users grow more sophisticated. Users are demanding greater bandwidth to support this sophistication.

In conventional systems a user might use several different suppliers and components to achieve connectivity and security. The user then has to change equipment and software protocols during his migration from a lower bandwidth (e.g., 56 kilobits per second or kbps) to a higher bandwidth (e.g., 1 Mbps or higher).

Accordingly, there is a need for a substantially simplified infrastructure to access public networks with a reduced number of components, a reduced number of software protocols, enhanced management capabilities for network components, and secure access to the public network.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides systems and methods for providing multiple users with access to a public network like the Internet. A single high-bandwidth connection (e.g., fast Ethernet) allows the multiple users to communicate with the public network. Each user is allocated a specific bandwidth, and the user is able to freely communicate with the public network up to the allocated bandwidth. Additionally, the invention may be remotely configured to change bandwidth allocations. [...]

"[Thomas Johannes Obenhuber (born 1955)], one of our founders, has served [at Telocity, Inc.] as our Senior Vice President, Corporate Development since February 2000. From August 1997 to February 2000, Mr. Obenhuber served [at Telocity, Inc.]as Senior Vice President, Business and Product Planning. From January 1995 through July 1997, Mr. Obenhuber served as Vice President, Operations and Engineering at [Genuity Incorporated], a national backbone Internet service provider that he co-started. [...]"

"[Thomas Johannes Obenhuber (born 1955)], one of our founders, has served [at Telocity, Inc.] as our Senior Vice President, Corporate Development since February 2000. From August 1997 to February 2000, Mr. Obenhuber served [at Telocity, Inc.]as Senior Vice President, Business and Product Planning. From January 1995 through July 1997, Mr. Obenhuber served as Vice President, Operations and Engineering at [Genuity Incorporated], a national backbone Internet service provider that he co-started. From July 1990 through January 1995, Mr. Obenhuber worked at Sun Microsystems where he most recently served as Director, System Architecture."

EDWARD (NED) HAYES is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Telocity, Inc. Mr. Hayes brings 20 years of financial management and business decision support experience to Telocity. He is the company's first Chief Financial Officer and has held that position since January 2000. He joined Telocity's management team from Lucent Technologies, where he was most recently Financial Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for the Global Service Provider Business - Lucent's sales, marketing and execution arm, responsible for supplying incumbent and emerging telecommunication and data networking carriers around the globe, generating approximately $20 billion in annual sales. Prior to joining Lucent, Mr. Hayes held Senior Financial Management positions with such diverse multinationals as Unisys Corporation, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), and Credit Suisse First Boston. He received his undergraduate degree from Colgate University and conducted his graduate studies in Accounting and Finance at New York University's Graduate School of Business. TWST: Start us off with a short overview and profile of Telocity.Mr. Hayes: Telocity was formed based on a belief that high-speed communications and multimedia-rich content would become more widely available to residential customers, similar to the way businesses currently enjoy intelligent, high-speed delivery of voice, video and data over their corporate networks. This vision was that of founders Peter Olson, a communications industry veteran and co-founder of voice-messaging leader, Octel; Kevin Grundy, Telocity's Senior Vice President in charge of Engineering, formerly a senior executive with Next Computer and Minerva Systems; and Thomas Obenhuber, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for Telocity, previously Vice President Operations and Engineering at Genuity. In 1997 Peter, Kevin and Thomas began work on an intelligent residential gateway. It was envisioned at the time that this device would be a residential hub that would enable secure, high-speed communications and commerce to the home…

Digital-subscriber-line service provider Telocity Inc. officially announced its new service name Tuesday, DirecTV DSL. Telocity is also changing its company name to DirecTV Broadband Inc.

DirecTV Inc. parent Hughes Electronics Corp. closed its purchase of Telocity in April, and it has promoted the new brand on a limited basis through direct mail and on DirecTV's Web site.

Ned Hayes, president and CEO of DirecTV Broadband, said DirecTV DSL is just the first of many DirecTV-tagged names that will be introduced as the company unveils new features to take advantage of the broadband service, such as home networking.

The company plans first to introduce the new DirecTV DSL brand to its high-speed Internet customers, as well as to its video customers, through electronic-mail and direct-mail campaigns. DirecTV DSL also plans radio campaigns in key markets within the next few weeks, and the company is working with DirecTV on an infomercial for its satellite-TV customers.

Next month, the company hopes to test its first retail introduction of DirecTV DSL. While Hayes said the specific retailer had not yet been signed, he added that it was likely to be one of the existing DirecTV retailers, such as Best Buy Co. Inc., RadioShack Corp. and Circuit City Stores Inc.

San Jose, Calif. – A 19-person startup is pitching concepts for revamping high-end printed-circuit-board and chip-packaging design to hit board-level data rates up to 40 Gbits/second at the cost of current 2.5-Gbit/s interconnects. SiliconPipe Inc., based here, hopes to sell its intellectual property to a key OEM or contract manufacturer within the next six months.

SiliconPipe takes the radical notion of using twinax and coax cables to create a clean channel for a backplane that delivers twice to five times the data rate of pc-board traces over existing connectors.

At the line card level, the two-year-old startup says that it is developing four chip packages that can deliver data rates of as much as 20 Gbits/s using flex circuits, direct die attach and other techniques that the company has not yet fully disclosed

The new physical channels allow board designs to run high-speed signals, generally using existing techniques such as common-mode logic in current power envelopes of 60 to 100 milliwatts.

“Today, a Cisco router might use a 50- or 60-layer pcb costing as much as $20,000 for the backplane and requiring sophisticated counterboring techniques that only five or six companies in the world can handle,” said Para Segaram, chairman and chief technology officer of SiliconPipe. “We think we know how to make such boards at a fraction of the cost. If you are the purchasing person at Cisco, you will love this because you will be able to go to 300 companies who could make your backplane board.

The new approach also could eliminate months of engineering work that communications OEMs spend checking bit error rates and signal integrity on each trace of their backplane boards.

The trick for SiliconPipe is to convince a large OEM or contract manufacturer to invest in gearing up for its relatively simple but radically different way of making such high-end boards. Indeed, one senior engineering manager at Cisco Systems Inc. said native 10-Gbit/s backplanes were not a top design priority at this point.

“Over a decade ago, people were embedding coax cable into pcb fabrication processes for specialized government contracts. There might be a way to commercialize something like this, but I don't see us using it for a long time,” said Bill Jennings, a senior engineer in Cisco's networking group.

While most of the backplanes in Cisco's products now run at 3.125 Gbits/s, the company hits 40-Gbit rates in some line cards by aggregating the signals. Moving to a native 10-Gbit backplane is less important than getting Layer 3 switching silicon up to 10-Gbit rates and providing thermal management for high-end systems, Jennings said.

Inside the pipe

SiliconPipe has developed connectors that mate with Teradyne Inc.'s HSD and GSD backplane connectors. The Silicion Pipe connectors provide leads to which third-party manufacturers can attach conventional twinax cables. The cables can be bundled and shielded in what finally appears to be a pipe about the diameter of a penny. The resulting channel can deliver 15 to 20 Gbits/s.

The startup has also developed a method for attaching coax cables to its own backplane connector design to create backplanes that could hit 40-Gbit/s data rates.

To adopt the SiliconPipe technique, OEMs would lay out just power and ground signals on a 10- to 15-layer pc board, have a third party create the cable and backplane connector assembly based on the OEM's Gerber files, and then have the cables assembled onto the board.

Though the process steps are simple, they are not currently handled on high-volume production lines. Thus, SiliconPipe is talking with large OEMs and contract manufacturers about acquiring its intellectual property in preparation for offering such a service.

“All the things we do are standard manufacturing techniques; there's no tricks or specialty processes here,” said Thomas Obenhuber, vice president of product development for SiliconPipe.

Cabling the backplane traces gets users about 60 percent better system throughput, the company said. To get the other 40 percent, new packaging techniques would need to be employed to route signals from a line card's connector at least to the card's main ASIC.

SiliconPipe claims to have four such packages in development, though it is cagey about discussing them while some patents are still in the application process. One of the packages involves extending a flex-circuit lead from the line card connector to lead frames that extend from the ASIC's die right to the outside of the package, essentially avoiding the package substrate.

Segaram claimed that a 130-nanometer die typically provides up to 10-Gbit/s throughput, but chip packaging typically slows that rate significantly.

“If you put a probe right on a ball connection at the base of a chip, you will see about 30 percent of the signal eye is already closed,” Obenhuber said.

A fiery one-car crash on Interstate 280 in Los Altos Hills last week claimed the life of a San Francisco resident, marking the second fatal accident to occur on that particular stretch of highway in just over a month.

Thomas Obenhuber, 48, was driving a 1998 Toyota Dec. 15 when he apparently lost control of the vehicle at around 6:45 p.m. while traveling north on I-280 near Magdalena Ave.

For unknown reasons, the vehicle veered down a grassy embankment and hit a tree, where it caught fire with Obenhuber still inside, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Prior to the collision, witnesses said, the car was traveling in the middle lane at a speed of about 80 mph when it suddenly crossed over onto the right-hand shoulder and turned into the embankment, according to an official report.

Responding firefighters declared the driver dead at the scene. Investigators were still looking into the cause of the accident.

The tragedy was preceded by a similar incident on the I-280 Nov. 13, involving an Isuzu Rodeo that overturned just south of El Monte Road, killing driver Hanh Do, 19, and passenger Amber Bazan, 16, both of San Jose. Do was apparently trying to change lanes to avoid a collision, according to reports.

Anyone with information on either accident is asked to contact the Redwood City California Highway Patrol office at 369-6261.