Gandalf Technologies, or simply Gandalf, was a Canadian

data communication Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

s company based in

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

. It was best known for

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s and

terminal adapter A terminal adapter or TA is a device that connects a terminal device – a computer, a mobile communications device, or other – to a communications network. ISDN In ISDN terminology, the ''terminal adapter'' connects a ''terminal'' (computer) ...

s that allowed

computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...

s to connect to host computers through a single interface. Gandalf also pioneered a radio-based

mobile data terminal A mobile data terminal (MDT) or mobile digital computer (MDC) is a computerized device used in emergency services, public transport, taxicabs, package delivery, roadside assistance, and logistics, among other fields, to communicate with a centra ...

that was popular for many years in

taxi A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice ...

dispatch systems. The rapid rise of

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

relegated many of Gandalf's products to niche status, and the company went bankrupt in 1997; its assets were acquired by

Mitel Mitel Networks Corporation is a Canadian telecommunications company. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications, but after a change in ownership in 2001, now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP (VoIP) products. Mitel ...

History

Gandalf was founded by Desmond Cunningham and Colin Patterson in 1971, and started business from the lobby of the Skyline Hotel, which is now the

Crowne Plaza Crowne Plaza is a British multinational chain of full service, upscale hotels headquartered in the United Kingdom. It caters to business travelers and the meetings and conventions market. It forms part of the InterContinental Hotels Group family ...

Hotel, on Albert Street in

. The company's first products were industrial-looking half-bridges for remote terminals which were supported by large terminal

multiplexer In electronics, a multiplexer (or mux; spelled sometimes as multiplexor), also known as a data selector, is a device that selects between several analog or digital input signals and forwards the selected input to a single output line. The sel ...

s on the "computer end". Gandalf referred to these systems as a " PACX", in analogy to the

telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is i ...

PABX A business telephone system is a multiline telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing systems ranging in technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX). A business telephone syst ...

which provided similar services in the voice field. These systems allowed the user to "dial up" the Gandalf box and then instruct it what computer they wanted to connect to. In this fashion, large computer networks could be built in a single location using shared resources, as opposed to having to dedicate terminals to different machines. These systems were particularly popular in large companies and universities. Gandalf supplanted these systems with "true" modems, both for host-to-host use and for

remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...

ers. Unlike most modems, Gandalf's devices were custom systems intended to connect only to another Gandalf modem, and were designed to extract the maximum performance possible. Gandalf sold a number of different designs intended to be used with different line lengths and qualities, from 4-wire modems running at 9600 bit/s over "short" distances (bumped to 19,200 bit/s in later models), to 2400 bit/s models for 2-wire runs over longer distances. On the host-end, modem blocks could be attached to the same PACX multiplexers, making local and remote access largely identical. With the introduction of low-cost high-speed modems in the early 1990s, Gandalf increasingly became irrelevant. Even highest-speed solutions were soon being outperformed by standardized systems like

v.32bis V3 or V03 may refer to: Medicine * Mandibular nerve, (V3),division of the trigeminal nerve * ATC code V03, a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System * Area V3 of the visual cortex * V3, one of six precordial leads in ...

. Low-cost

s based on

RADIUS In classical geometry, a radius ( : radii) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the latin ''radius'', meaning ray but also the ...

(and similar) technologies connecting to

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

further eroded its core businesses, offering features similar to PACX switches. Gandalf's solutions were decidedly "low tech"; users selected what computer they wanted to connect to by selecting a two-digit number on the front of the modem, often requiring a "phone book" if more than one host computer was being used. In comparison, the more modern terminal adapters generally included a

command line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

that allowed the user to select a host from a directory that appeared on their terminal. Introductions of Ethernet concentrators and

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Wo ...

-based versions of earlier host adapters did little to fix the problem, never becoming very popular in comparison to the standardized solutions from other vendors. Gandalf Technologies filed for bankruptcy in 1997.

purchased all of the product business of Gandalf, including intellectual properties, the goodwill of the business including the exclusive right to use the name worldwide for $14.9 million. Mitel used the data technology and personnel to help move its PBX division into the

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

market. Mitel tried to keep some Gandalf data products in the market for a short time, but poor sales led to them being abandoned.

References

{{Reflist Defunct companies of Ontario Companies based in Ottawa Defunct networking companies Telecommunications equipment vendors Companies that have filed for bankruptcy in Canada Technology companies disestablished in 1997 Defunct technology companies of Canada Defunct telecommunications companies of Canada Canadian companies established in 1971 Canadian companies disestablished in 1997 1971 establishments in Ontario