Wellfleet
More info
- Released
- 1986–1994
- Type
- Router manufacturer
- Successor
- Bay Networks
The router that seriously challenged Cisco before a merger fumbled the lead away.
Wellfleet Communications, founded in 1986 in Massachusetts, built high-performance multiprotocol routers and was Cisco's clearest rival in the early 1990s. Its architecture of multiple parallel processors delivered high throughput just as the internet and enterprise networks were growing fastest.
In 1994 Wellfleet merged with SynOptics to form Bay Networks. The idea was to cover both routing and switching, but East Coast versus West Coast, two corporate cultures and overlapping products slowed the company down while Cisco pulled ahead. Nortel bought the remains in 1998. Wellfleet is the example of how a technical leader can be lost inside a merger.