3Com Corporation
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| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: COMS (1984-2010) |
| Industry | Computer network products |
| Fate | Acquired by Hewlett-Packard |
| Successor | Hewlett-Packard |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Founder | Robert Metcalfe and others |
| Defunct | April 12, 2010 |
| Website | www |
3Com Corporation was a digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw and recruited Bill Krause from Hewlett-Packard to be its president in February 1981 when it raised its first round of venture capital. Metcalfe has explained that he came up with the name 3Com as a contraction of "Computer Communication Compatibility", with its focus on deploying the Ethernet technology that he had co-invented, which enabled the networking of computers.
3Com provided network interface controllers and switches, routers, wireless access points and controllers, IP voice systems, and intrusion prevention systems. The company was based in Santa Clara, Calif., USA. From its 2007 acquisition of 100 percent ownership of H3C Technologies Co., Limited (H3C) —initially a joint venture with China-based Huawei Technologies—3Com achieved a leading market presence in China, and a significant networking market share in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. 3Com products were sold under the brands 3Com, H3C, and TippingPoint.
On April 12, 2010, Hewlett-Packard completed the acquisition of 3Com. Since the acquisition, 3Com has been fully absorbed by Hewlett-Packard and no longer exists as a separate entity.
After reading an article on ALOHAnet, Bob Metcalfe became interested in the topic of computer networking. ALOHAnet was an over-the-air wide area network system in Hawaii using UHF radios and made several assumptions that Metcalfe thought would not be correct in practice. He developed his own theories of how to manage traffic, and began to consider an "ALOHAnet in a wire" networking system. In 1972 he joined Xerox PARC to develop these ideas, and after pairing up with David Boggs, the two had early 3 Mbit/s versions of Ethernet working in 1973. They then went on to build up a networking protocol known as PARC Universal Packet (PuP), with the entire system ready for build-out by late 1974.
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Wikipedia