Bay Networks
More info
- Released
- 1994–1998
- Type
- Networking equipment
- Predecessor
- SynOptics, Wellfleet Communications
- Successor
- Acquired by Nortel
Four years of trying to build a counterweight to Cisco by bolting a hub maker onto a router maker.
California's SynOptics had made Ethernet over ordinary twisted-pair cable practical with its hubs, while Massachusetts-based Wellfleet built the routers that came closest to Cisco's. In 1994 they merged as Bay Networks, one of the largest networking companies in the world.
The trouble was that customers wanted to buy the whole network from one vendor, and Cisco integrated its products faster than Bay could merge two organisations on opposite coasts. In 1998 Canada's Nortel bought the company for just over $9 billion, betting that data networks and telephony would converge. They did, just not on Nortel's terms.