Redback Networks provided hardware and software used by

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s to manage

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

services. The company's products included the SMS (Subscriber Management System), SmartEdge, and SmartMetro product lines. In January 2007, the company was acquired by

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

History

Redback Networks was founded in August 1996 by Gaurav Garg, Asher Waldfogel, and William M. Salkewicz. The company received

seed money Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggest ...

from

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

. In May 1999, during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

, the company became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

. After pricing at $23 each, shares soared 266% on the first day of trading. In November 1999, the company acquired Siara Systems, which at the time only had products in the prototype stage, for $4.3 billion in stock. In 2000, its share price peaked at $198 but fell to $0.27 in October 2002, after the burst of the

. In August 2000, the company acquired Abatis Systems. In October 2000, the company opened a regional headquarters in

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

. In January 2007, the company was acquired by

for $1.9 billion, or $25 per share.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1996 establishments in California 1999 initial public offerings 2007 mergers and acquisitions Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Networking hardware companies Dot-com bubble Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct networking companies Defunct software companies of the United States