Cabletron Systems

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Cabletron Systems was a New Hampshire, USA-based provider of networking computer equipment that provided one of the major hardware boom stories of the dot-com era before succumbing to competition and breaking up into four subsidiaries in 2000.

Cabletron was founded in 1983 in a Massachusetts garage by Craig Benson, who later became New Hampshire's governor, and Robert Levine. It moved to Rochester, New Hampshire and at its peak employed 6,600 people. Cabletron's early success was in the manufacture of high-density 10base-T Ethernet hubs. Cabletron also made and sold routers and other networking equipment, but eventually succumbed to competition from companies such as Cisco Systems and 3Com.

In 2000 it reorganized as a holding company for networking firms: Enterasys Networks of Andover, Massachusetts (which went public in 2001 and was taken private in 2006 by The Gores Group, owned by Alec Gores); Riverstone Networks of Santa Clara, California (acquired by Lucent Technologies, which was subsequently merged with Alcatel Networks, resulting in the wind-down and Chapter 11 liquidation of Riverstone assets); Aprisma Management Technologies of Durham, New Hampshire (subsequently acquired by Concord Communications which in turn was acquired for $350M by Computer Associates, now renamed CA, Inc.); and Global Network Technology Services (also known as GNTS) of The Woodlands, Texas (this company no longer exists).

Enterasys Networks continues within their knowledge base to make available some of the documentation of the original Cabletron Systems MMAC-series MultiMedia Access Center.