Cabletron Systems was a major New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, USA-based provider of networking computer equipment throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Cabletron's design and sales methodologies dramatically reduced the cost of Ethernet networking equipment, covering a wide range of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networking technologies within a unified product line.

History

Cabletron was founded in 1983 in a Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 garage by Craig Benson

Craig Benson

Craig R. Benson is an American politician and businessman. He served as Governor of New Hampshire from 2003 to 2005...

 (who later became New Hampshire's governor) and Robert Levine. As manufacturing and design operations expanded, Cabletron relocated to Rochester, New Hampshire

Rochester, New Hampshire

Rochester is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 29,752. The city includes the villages of East Rochester and Gonic. Rochester is home to Skyhaven Airport and the annual Rochester Fair....

, employing 6,600 people at its peak. Cabletron found its first success in the 10BASE-5 Ethernet market, providing the ST-500, the first Ethernet transceiver that featured diagnostic LEDs, and the LAN-MD, the first commercially-viable field-deployable 10BASE-5 test set. The early products were critical in the history of Ethernet as 10BASE-5 Ethernet was generally difficult to operate and maintain and cabling problems were especially difficult to diagnose. Following on this early success, Cabletron developed one of the first modular Ethernet hubs, the MMAC-8 (and its smaller sibling, the MMAC-5) at the time that 10BASE-T

10BASE-T

Ethernet over twisted pair technologies use twisted-pair cables for the physical layer of an Ethernet computer network. Other Ethernet cable standards employ coaxial cable or optical fiber. Early versions developed in the 1980s included StarLAN followed by 10BASE-T. By the 1990s, fast, inexpensive...

 was becoming standardized. By developing high-density 10base-T modules (24 or 48 ports per slot), Cabletron was able to reduce the price per port of these hubs to a very affordable level, and by introducing a custom Element Management System known as Prism, made the MMAC-8 easy to maintain.

As Cabletron expanded its reach in the networking business, they initially moved into Layer 3

Network Layer

The network layer is layer 3 of the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking.The network layer is responsible for packet forwarding including routing through intermediate routers, whereas the data link layer is responsible for media access control, flow control and error checking.The network...

 routing by partnering with Cisco

Cisco

Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...

, co-developing a Cisco router that would fit into the MMAC-8 hub. At about the same time, Cabletron's main competitor, SynOptics

SynOptics

SynOptics Communications was a Santa Clara, California-based early computer network equipment vendor from 1985 until 1994, when it began a series of mergers....

 Communications, introduced a Layer 3 router for their 3000-series hubs that was developed in partnership with Wellfleet Communications, whom they subsequently acquired. Cabletron ultimately developed its own routing capability, but found it increasingly difficult to compete at the low end of the Ethernet market and continue to invest in high-end routing technology.

Recognizing this fact, Cabletron reorganized as a holding company in 2000, hoping to apply appropriate focus to the different parts of its business as they had evolved over time. The holding company was set up to control four networking firms:

1. Enterasys Networks

Enterasys Networks

Formed in March 2000 as a spin-off of Cabletron Systems, Enterasys Networks is a networking company catering almost exclusively to large enterprises...

 of Andover, Massachusetts

Andover, Massachusetts

Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was incorporated in 1646 and as of the 2010 census, the population was 33,201...

, which was based on the original core products of Cabletron. Enterasys later merged with Cabletron Systems the holding company, though keeping the Enterasys name, before going public in 2001. Subsequently, Enterasys was taken private in 2006 by The Gores Group, which is owned by Alec Gores

Alec Gores

Alec E. Gores is an American businessman who made his fortune through leveraged buyouts of technology firms. His personal wealth was estimated at roughly $1.5 billion by Forbes magazine in 2008.-Early life and education:...

. In 2008, The Gores Group acquired a controlling interest in Siemens Enterprise Communications and merged the acquired company with Enterasys, pledging with Siemens to invest up to €350M in the new entity.

2. Riverstone Networks

Riverstone Networks

Riverstone Networks, was a provider of networking switching hardware based in Santa Clara, California. Originally part of Cabletron Systems, and based on an early acquisition of YAGO, it was one of the many Gigabit Ethernet startups in the mid-1990s...

 of Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...

, which was based on the assets of YAGO Systems, a company acquired by Cabletron as an attempt to move into the Switched Ethernet business. Riverstone Networks was the only actual spin-off of Cabletron's reorganization and it was later acquired by Lucent Technologies, which in turn subsequently merged with Alcatel Networks. This final merger resulted in Riverstone assets becoming redundant with Lucent products and technologies, causing Alcaltel-Lucent to wind down Riverstone Networks operations. Eventually, Riverstone was placed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and liquidated.

3. Aprisma Management Technologies

Aprisma Management Technologies

Aprisma Management Technologies was created after Cabletron Systems was broken up into 5 smaller pieces, as the business unit to continue the highly successful SPECTRUM network management suite. It was acquired in early 2005 by Concord, which in turn was acquired by Computer Associates....

 of Durham, New Hampshire

Durham, New Hampshire

As of the census of 2000, there were 12,664 people, 2,882 households, and 1,582 families residing in the town. The population density was 565.5 people per square mile . There were 2,923 housing units at an average density of 130.5 per square mile...

 (a subsidiary of Enterasys following the Cabletron paper merger). Aprisma held most of the original Cabletron network management technologies that were based on the SPECTRUM

CA Spectrum

CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager is a network infrastructure management software by CA, Inc. Spectrum enables the modeling of LAN, WAN, wired, wireless, physical and virtual networks....

 software suite (thus suggesting the name of the company). Aprisma was subsequently acquired by Concord Communications which in turn was acquired for $350M by Computer Associates, now renamed CA, Inc.

4. Global Network Technology Services (also known as GNTS) of The Woodlands, Texas

The Woodlands, Texas

The Woodlands is a master-planned community and a Census-designated place in the U.S. state of Texas within the metropolitan area. The population of the CDP was 55,649 at the 2000 census—a 90 percent increase over its 1990 population. According to the 2010 census, The Woodlands' population rose...

, a network installation and management company. GNTS employed more than 800 people but was dissolved in 2001, a casualty of the dot-com collapse and subsequent contraction in demand for network services.

Enterasys Networks, now officially a Siemens Enterprise Communications Company, continues to manufacture all manner of networking equipment and to make available most of the documentation of the original Cabletron Systems products within their knowledge base.