Kalpana, Inc.
American computer network company (1990-1994)
Kalpana, Inc., was an American computer-networking equipment manufacturer located in Sunnyvale, California, which operated during the early 1990s in Silicon Valley. They were the manufacturer of the first Ethernet switch. Cisco Systems acquired Kalpana in 1994.
01History
Its co-founders, Vinod Bhardwaj, an entrepreneur of Indian origin, and Larry Blair named the company after Bhardwaj's wife, Kalpana, whose name means "imagination" in Sanskrit. Charles Giancarlo was Kalpana's vice president of products and corporate development, became its General Manager, and went on to roles at Cisco Systems and Silver Lake Partners.
In 1990, Kalpana introduced the first multiport Ethernet switch, its seven-port EtherSwitch. The invention of Ethernet switching made Ethernet networks faster, cheaper, and easier to manage. Multi-port network switches became common, gradually replacing Ethernet hubs for almost all applications, and enabled an easy transition to 100-megabit Fast Ethernet and later Gigabit Ethernet. Kalpana also invented EtherChannel, which provides higher inter-switch bandwidth by running several links in parallel. This innovation, more generally called link aggregation, 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 acquired Kalpana in 1994.
02Product
Kalpana produced two models of Ethernet switch, the EPS-700 and the EPS-1500.
| EPS-700 | EPS-1500 | |
|---|---|---|
| max. Ports | 7× AUI 10 Mbit/s | 15× AUI 10 Mbit/s |
| Forwarding method | Cut-through switching | |
| Throughput | 30 Mbit/s | 70 Mbit/s |
| Latency | 40 μs | |
| Buffer | 256 packets | |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kalpana, Inc.”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Kalpana logo.svg by Kalpana, Public domain
- Kalpana-switch.jpg by Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island, CC BY-SA 3.0
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