Paul Baran - Later Work

Later Work

In 1968 Baran was a founder of the Institute for the Future, and then involved in other networking technologies developed in Silicon Valley. He participated in a review of the NBS proposal for a Data Encryption Standard in 1976, along with Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie of Stanford University. In the early 1980s, Baran founded PacketCable, Inc, "to support impulse-pay television channels, locally generated videotex, and packetized voice transmission". PacketCable (also known as Packet Technologies) spun off StrataCom to commercialize his packet voice technology for the telephony market. This technology led to the first commercial pre-standard Asynchronous Transfer Mode product. He founded Telebit after conceiving its discrete multitone modem technology in the mid-1980s. This was one of the first commercial products to use Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, which was later widely deployed in DSL modems and Wi-Fi wireless modems. In 1985, Baran founded Metricom, the first wireless Internet company, which deployed Ricochet, the first public wireless mesh networking system. In 1992, he also founded Com21, an early cable modem company. Following Com21, Baran founded and was president of GoBackTV, which specializes in personal TV and cable IPTV infrastructure equipment for television operators. Most recently he founded Plaster Networks, providing an advanced solution for connecting networked devices in the home or small office through existing wiring.

Baran extended his work in packet switching to wireless-spectrum theory, developing what he called "kindergarten rules" for the use of wireless spectrum.

In addition to his innovation in networking products, he is also credited with inventing the first metal detector, a doorway gun detector.

He received an honorary doctorate when he gave the commencement speech at Drexel in 1997.