Ungermann-Bass, also known as UB and UB Networks, was a

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

ing company in the 1980s to 1990s. Located in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

, UB was the first large networking company independent of any computer manufacturer. Along with competitor

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

, UB was responsible for starting the networking business in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as 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 areas San Mateo Coun ...

in 1979. UB was founded by

Ralph Ungermann Ralph Kelley Ungermann (20 January 1942 – 2 June 2015) was an American engineer and entrepreneur. He is best known for founding Zilog with Federico Faggin and Ungermann-Bass with Charlie Bass. Due to his work in U-B, he was considered to ...

and Charlie Bass. John Davidson, vice president of engineering, was one of the creators of NCP, the

transport protocol Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, ...

of the

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

before TCP. UB specialized in large enterprise networks connecting computer systems and devices from multiple vendors, which was unusual in the 1980s. At that time most network equipment came from computer manufacturers and usually used only protocols compatible with that one manufacturer's computer systems, such as IBM's SNA or DEC's

DECnet DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC ...

. Many UB products initially used the XNS protocol suite, including the flagship Net/One, and later transitioned to TCP/IP as it became an industry standard in the late 1980s. Before it became the industry standard, the

Internet protocol suite 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 sui ...

TCP/IP was initially a "check box" item needed to qualify on prospective enterprise sales. As a network technology supplier to both

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

, in 1987-88 UB helped Apple implement their initial MacTCP offering and also helped Microsoft with a

Winsock In computing, the Windows Sockets API (WSA), later shortened to Winsock, is an application programming interface (API) that defines how Windows network application software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standar ...

compatible software/hardware bundle for the Microsoft Windows platform. With the success of these offerings and of the Internet protocol TCP/IP, both Apple and Microsoft subsequently brought the Internet technology in-house and integrated it into their core products. UB marketed a

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

(in the original technical sense) version of

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 1 ...

known as

10BROAD36 10BROAD36 is an obsolete computer network standard in the Ethernet family. It was developed during the 1980s and specified in IEEE 802.3b-1985. The standard supports 10 Mbit/s Ethernet signals over standard 75 ohm cable television (CATV) ...

in the mid 1980s. It was generally seen as hard to install. UB was one of the first network manufacturers to sell equipment that implemented

Ethernet over twisted pair Ethernet over twisted-pair technologies use twisted-pair cables for the physical layer of an Ethernet computer network. They are a subset of all Ethernet physical layers. Early Ethernet used various grades of coaxial cable, but in 1984, Sta ...

wiring. UB's AccessOne product line initially used the pre-standard

StarLAN StarLAN was the first IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. It was standardized by the standards association of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as 802.3e in 1986, as the 1BASE5 version of Ethernet. ...

and, when it became standard, 10BASE-T. UB went public in 1983. It was bought by

Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum up ...

in 1988. UB was sold in 1997 by Tandem to

Newbridge Networks Newbridge Networks was an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada company founded by Welsh-Canadian entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews. It was founded in 1986 to create data and voice networking products after Matthews was forced out of his original company Mitel ...

. Over the next several months, Newbridge laid off the bulk of the Ungermann-Bass employees, and closed the doors of the Santa Clara operation. Newbridge was later acquired by

Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...

, a French telecommunications company.

References

Defunct networking companies XNS based protocols {{company-stub