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Kalpana, Inc., was an American computer-networking equipment manufacturer located in
Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real (California), El Camino Real and U.S. Route 101 in California, Highway 1 ...
, which operated during the early 1990s in
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
. They were the manufacturer of the first
Ethernet switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, Ethernet switch, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destinat ...
. Cisco Systems acquired Kalpana in 1994.


History

Its co-founders, Vinod Bhardwaj, an entrepreneur of Indian origin,Network world website
Network website and Larry Blair named the company after Bhardwaj's wife, Kalpana, whose name means "imagination" in
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
. Charles Giancarlo was Kalpana's vice president of products and corporate development, became its General Manager, and went on to roles at
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...
and
Silver Lake Partners Silver Lake Technology Management, L.L.C., is an American global private equity firm focused on technology and technology-enabled investments. Silver Lake is headquartered in Silicon Valley and New York, and has offices in London, Hong Kong, and ...
. In 1990, Kalpana introduced the first multiport
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 ...
switch, its seven-port EtherSwitch. The invention of Ethernet switching made Ethernet networks faster, cheaper, and easier to manage. Multi-port
network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, Ethernet switch, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destinat ...
es became common, gradually replacing
Ethernet hub An Ethernet hub, active hub, network hub, repeater hub, multiport repeater, or simply hub is a network hardware device for connecting multiple Ethernet devices together and making them act as a single network segment. It has multiple input/out ...
s for almost all applications, and enabled an easy transition to 100-megabit
Fast Ethernet In computer networking, Fast Ethernet Ethernet physical layer, physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of . The Classic Ethernet, prior Ethernet speed was . Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common. ...
and later
Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...
. Kalpana also invented
EtherChannel EtherChannel is a port link aggregation technology or port-channel architecture used primarily on Cisco switches. It allows grouping of several physical Ethernet links to create one logical Ethernet link for the purpose of providing fault-toleran ...
, which provides higher inter-switch bandwidth by running several links in parallel. This innovation, more generally called
link aggregation In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining ( aggregating) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods. Link aggregation increases total throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and prov ...
, was also widely adopted throughout the industry. Kalpana also invented the Virtual LAN concept as closed broadcast domains, which was later replaced by 802.1Q.
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...
acquired Kalpana in 1994.


Product

Kalpana produced two models of Ethernet switch, the EPS-700 and the EPS-1500.


See also

*
List of acquisitions by Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American computer networking company. Cisco made its first acquisition in 1993, which was followed by a series of further acquisitions. History Founded in 1984, Cisco did not acquire a comp ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalpana (Company) 1987 establishments in California 1994 disestablishments in California 1994 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1987 American companies disestablished in 1994 Cisco acquisitions Computer companies established in 1987 Computer companies disestablished in 1994 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct networking companies Networking hardware companies