I was an early @home user. In ~98 I was one of the first in the area to sign up for broadband. It was exceptionally fast for a time when not that many people were on the internet and the ones who were mostly used dialup.
You had your own public IP (NAT really wasn't a thing back then). Unblocked ports mean't you could peruse your neighbors public SMB windows shares.
What I didn't realize at the time was @home didn't really offer anything unique. They had decent network infrastructure, a yahoo style news portal, they provided an email address, and offered tech support. I imagine cable companies realized quickly enough that they could offer the same thing and cut @home out of the picture since after all the cable companies were offering last mile connectivity and they were the ones with the real control of the end customer.
Even though I didn't see this coming myself, Excite should have figured it out and never bought @home. That being said, for it's time, it was a great service and I felt fortunate to have it.
I was an early @home user. In ~98 I was one of the first in the area to sign up for broadband. It was exceptionally fast for a time when not that many people were on the internet and the ones who were mostly used dialup. You had your own public IP (NAT really wasn't a thing back then). Unblocked ports mean't you could peruse your neighbors public SMB windows shares. What I didn't realize at the time was @home didn't really offer anything unique. They had decent network infrastructure, a yahoo style news portal, they provided an email address, and offered tech support. I imagine cable companies realized quickly enough that they could offer the same thing and cut @home out of the picture since after all the cable companies were offering last mile connectivity and they were the ones with the real control of the end customer. Even though I didn't see this coming myself, Excite should have figured it out and never bought @home. That being said, for it's time, it was a great service and I felt fortunate to have it.