FORE Systems
Encyclopedia
FORE Systems was a computer network
switching equipment company based in Pittsburgh
, Pennsylvania
. The company is now part of Ericsson
.
(ATM) network interface cards for SBus
- and TURBOchannel
-based computers in addition to ATM adapters for Silicon Graphics
computers. FORE's first ATM Switch - the ASX-100 - connected 16 ATM ports each with a capacity of 155.52 Mbit/s. Later interface adapters for the follow-on ASX-200, ASX-1000, and ASX-4000 switches allowed connections up to 2.5 Gbit/s
.
The company established a leading position in the market for ATM switching equipment. FORE created a memory-based ATM switch that captured a strong portion of the ATM market. Other technologies include Internet Protocol
, Gigabit Ethernet
and Firewall switching. FORE Systems also supported advanced dynamic routing protocols such as the ForeThought Private Network Network Interface (PNNI) and the ATM Forum
's PNNI protocol.
FORE was created by four Carnegie Mellon University
professors in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
suburb of Warrendale. The name FORE was an acronym of the founders’ first names: Francois Bitz, Onat Menzilcioglu, Robert Sansom, and Eric Cooper.
It was acquired by London based GEC (now Marconi Corporation plc) to complement its Marconi Communications
business and to increase its presence in North America, the world’s largest telecoms market.
GEC acquired FORE on April 26, 1999, near the peak of the dot-com bubble
. The £2.8bn (US$4.5bn) price tag for FORE Systems (and the £1.3n spent on Reltec a month earlier) took a heavy toll on Marconi following the “burst of the dot-com bubble” in 2000/2001. In July 2001 Marconi plc suffered a 54% drop in its share price following suspension of trading of its shares, a profits warning and redundancies. The company survived following a relaunch as Marconi Corporation plc in a debt-for-equity swap whereby the firm’s creditors received 99.5% of the new company’s shares.
In 2006, Ericsson purchased most of Marconi, including the part that used to be FORE Systems.
Euristix Ltd., a telecommunications software company based in Dublin, Ireland for $81 million.
Euristix delivered network management and Intelligent Networking software expertise.
1998
Berkeley Networks
Inc.
Fore Systems Inc. acquired the closely held Berkeley Networks Inc. for $250 million in stock and cash, acquiring equipment that speeds data on computer networks run by Microsoft's Windows NT software. Fore, the No. 7 maker of networking equipment, issued 8.48 million shares for all the shares of Berkeley Net.
1996
Scalable Networks Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Scalable Networks Inc., an O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania developer of high-performance technology used to access asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks for about $34 million. The deal adds a line of local area network (LAN) equipment to FORE's product line and is likely to enhance the company's position in the global ATM market.
1995
Alantec Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Alantec Inc. for about $768 million. Alantec, a San Jose, California manufacturer of Ethernet
and FDDI switching hubs, provided IEEE 802
Ethernet to ATM aggregation.
1995
Applied Network Technology, Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Applied Network Technology Inc. for about $35 million. ANT, a Westford, Massachusetts manufacturer of Ethernet
and Fast Ethernet
switching hubs, provided high density/low cost IEEE 802
Ethernet to ATM aggregation.
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
switching equipment company based in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. The company is now part of Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
.
History
Founded in 1990 to supply a US Naval Research Laboratories request for development, FORE initially produced Asynchronous Transfer ModeAsynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...
(ATM) network interface cards for SBus
SBus
SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s...
- and TURBOchannel
TURBOchannel
TURBOchannel is an open computer bus developed by DEC by during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although it was open for any vendor to implement in their own systems, it was mostly used in Digital's own systems such as the MIPS-based DECstation and DECsystem systems, in the VAXstation 4000, and in...
-based computers in addition to ATM adapters for Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
computers. FORE's first ATM Switch - the ASX-100 - connected 16 ATM ports each with a capacity of 155.52 Mbit/s. Later interface adapters for the follow-on ASX-200, ASX-1000, and ASX-4000 switches allowed connections up to 2.5 Gbit/s
Optical Carrier
Optical Carrier transmission rates are a standardized set of specifications of transmission bandwidth for digital signals that can be carried on Synchronous Optical Networking fiber optic networks...
.
The company established a leading position in the market for ATM switching equipment. FORE created a memory-based ATM switch that captured a strong portion of the ATM market. Other technologies include Internet Protocol
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...
, Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...
and Firewall switching. FORE Systems also supported advanced dynamic routing protocols such as the ForeThought Private Network Network Interface (PNNI) and the ATM Forum
ATM Forum
The ATM Forum was founded in 1991 to be the industry consortium to promote Asynchronous Transfer Mode technology used in telecommunication networks. It was a non-profit international organization. The ATM Forum created over 200 implementation agreements....
's PNNI protocol.
FORE was created by four Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
professors in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
suburb of Warrendale. The name FORE was an acronym of the founders’ first names: Francois Bitz, Onat Menzilcioglu, Robert Sansom, and Eric Cooper.
It was acquired by London based GEC (now Marconi Corporation plc) to complement its Marconi Communications
Marconi Communications
Marconi Communications was a principal subsidiary of the Marconi Corporation plc and was formerly known as GEC Plessey Telecommunications . The company was a world leading telecommunications manufacturer...
business and to increase its presence in North America, the world’s largest telecoms market.
GEC acquired FORE on April 26, 1999, near the peak of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
. The £2.8bn (US$4.5bn) price tag for FORE Systems (and the £1.3n spent on Reltec a month earlier) took a heavy toll on Marconi following the “burst of the dot-com bubble” in 2000/2001. In July 2001 Marconi plc suffered a 54% drop in its share price following suspension of trading of its shares, a profits warning and redundancies. The company survived following a relaunch as Marconi Corporation plc in a debt-for-equity swap whereby the firm’s creditors received 99.5% of the new company’s shares.
In 2006, Ericsson purchased most of Marconi, including the part that used to be FORE Systems.
Acquisition history
1999Euristix Ltd., a telecommunications software company based in Dublin, Ireland for $81 million.
Euristix delivered network management and Intelligent Networking software expertise.
1998
Berkeley Networks
Berkeley Networks
Berkeley Networks was a leading startup company that built intelligent switches targeted for the high end of the small and medium-sized business computer networking market segment....
Inc.
Fore Systems Inc. acquired the closely held Berkeley Networks Inc. for $250 million in stock and cash, acquiring equipment that speeds data on computer networks run by Microsoft's Windows NT software. Fore, the No. 7 maker of networking equipment, issued 8.48 million shares for all the shares of Berkeley Net.
1996
Scalable Networks Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Scalable Networks Inc., an O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania developer of high-performance technology used to access asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks for about $34 million. The deal adds a line of local area network (LAN) equipment to FORE's product line and is likely to enhance the company's position in the global ATM market.
1995
Alantec Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Alantec Inc. for about $768 million. Alantec, a San Jose, California manufacturer of Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
and FDDI switching hubs, provided IEEE 802
IEEE 802
IEEE 802 refers to a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks.More specifically, the IEEE 802 standards are restricted to networks carrying variable-size packets. IEEE 802 refers to a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and...
Ethernet to ATM aggregation.
1995
Applied Network Technology, Inc.
FORE Systems Inc. acquired Applied Network Technology Inc. for about $35 million. ANT, a Westford, Massachusetts manufacturer of Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
and Fast Ethernet
Fast Ethernet
In computer networking, Fast Ethernet is a collective term for a number of Ethernet standards that carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s, against the original Ethernet speed of 10 Mbit/s. Of the fast Ethernet standards 100BASE-TX is by far the most common and is supported by the...
switching hubs, provided high density/low cost IEEE 802
IEEE 802
IEEE 802 refers to a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks.More specifically, the IEEE 802 standards are restricted to networks carrying variable-size packets. IEEE 802 refers to a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and...
Ethernet to ATM aggregation.