SynOptics
More info
- Released
- 1985–1994
- Type
- Networking equipment
- Successor
- Bay Networks
Turned Ethernet into something you could run over ordinary phone wire — and established the star topology.
SynOptics Communications, founded in 1985 on technology from Xerox PARC, showed that Ethernet could run over twisted-pair copper in a star around a central hub — LattisNet, the forerunner of the 10BASE-T standard. It broke with the old coaxial bus and made structured in-building cabling possible.
In 1994 SynOptics merged with the router company Wellfleet Communications to form Bay Networks, an attempt to challenge Cisco at both ends of the network. The merger was messy, and Bay Networks was eventually bought by Nortel. But the star topology SynOptics championed became the way every modern LAN is built.