Cabletron buys Yago, beefs up routing

Cabletron Systems acquired multilayer switching developer Yago Systems last week in a deal worth $213 million. Cabletron is eager to integrate Yago's hardware-based switched routing technology into its product line, including the SmartSwitch, Spectrum and Securefast platforms, said Don Reed, Cabletron president and CEO.

Specific product plans will be announced at the ComNet show in Washington next week.

The deal is a strategic move for Cabletron, now ranked No. 4 in the router market behind Cisco Systems, Bay Networks and 3Com. The vendor has been aggressively marketing products against its rivals for the past few years.

"We'll target service providers and the router-centric accounts of our competitors," Reed said.

With Yago's multilayer switched routing, Cabletron has a competitive edge for building next generation router products. Yago's application specific integrated circuit technology lets its routers transport 15 million to 30 million packets per second as opposed to the thousands of packets per second that traditional routers move.

"Current router-based networks don't work," said Mike Skubisz, vice president of solutions marketing at Cabletron. "The requirements are much greater in today's networks. It's not just performance, it's control you need."

Yago, considered a hot start-up in 1996, employs engineers and executives formerly from Intel, Sun, Cisco, Bay and Hewlett-Packard. The company also has focused on handling quality of service, multimedia and reliability demands.

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