Fergie's Tech Blog

22 April 1996: Cisco Systems Acquires Stratacom

Via Wikipedia.

Cisco Systems acquired StrataCom [on 22 April, 1996] for US$4 billion. The acquired employees formed the core of Cisco's Multi-Service Switching Business Unit and helped moved Cisco more into the carrier equipment space.

StrataCom, Inc. was founded in Cupertino, California, USA, in January 1986 by 26 former employees of the failing Packet Technologies, Inc. StrataCom produced the first commercial cell switch, also known as a fast-packet switch. Its product was the working proof of the technology which became known as Asynchronous Transfer Mode or ATM. ATM became a key technology underlying the world's communications systems in the 1990s and 2000s.

Internet pioneer Paul Baran was an employee of Packet Technologies and provided a spark of invention at the initiation of the Integrated Packet Exchange (IPX) project. (StrataCom's IPX communication system is unrelated to Novell's IPX Internetwork Packet Exchange protocol.) The IPX was initially known as the PacketDAX, which was a play on words of Digital access and cross-connect system (or DACS). A rich collection of inventions were contained in the IPX, and many were provided by the other members of the development team. The names on the original three IPX patents are Paul Baran, Charles Corbalis, Brian Holden, Jim Marggraff, Jon Masatsugu, David Owen, and Pete Stonebridge. StrataCom's implementation of ATM was pre-standard and used 24 byte cells instead of standards-based ATM's 53 byte cells. However, many of concepts and details found in the ATM set of standards were derived directly from StrataCom's technology including the use of CRC-Based Framing on its links.

More here.

Honorable Mention: "The Red Scare" -- On 22 April, 1954, the Army-McCarthy Hearings begin.

posted by Fergie @ 4/21/2006 10:01:00 PM