StrataCom
| Division | |
| Industry | Computer networking |
| Fate | Acquired by Cisco Systems |
| Founded | United States (1986) |
| Headquarters | Cupertino, California, USA |
| Parent | Cisco Systems |
StrataCom, Inc. was a supplier of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay high-speed wide area network (WAN) switching equipment. StrataCom was founded in Cupertino, California, USA, in January 1986, by 26 former employees of the failing Packet Technologies, Inc. StrataCom produced the first commercial cell switch, also known as a fast-packet switch. ATM was one of the technologies underlying the world's communications systems in the 1990s.
Internet pioneer Paul Baran was an employee of Packet Technologies and provided a spark of invention at the initiation of the Integrated Packet Exchange (IPX) project (StrataCom's IPX communication system is unrelated to Novell's IPX Internetwork Packet Exchange protocol).
The IPX was initially known as the PacketDAX, which was a play on words of Digital access and cross-connect system (or DACS). A rich collection of inventions were contained in the IPX, and many were provided by the other members of the development team. The names on the original three IPX patents are Paul Baran, Charles Corbalis, Brian Holden, Jim Marggraff, Jon Masatsugu, David Owen and Pete Stonebridge. StrataCom's implementation of ATM was pre-standard and used 24 byte cells instead of standards-based ATM's 53 byte cells. However, many of concepts and details found in the ATM set of standards were derived directly from StrataCom's technology, including the use of CRC-based framing on its links.
The IPX's first use was as a 4-1 voice compression system. It implemented Voice-Activity-Detection (VAD) and ADPCM, which together, gave 4-1 compression allowing 96 telephone calls to be fit into the space of 24. The IPX was also used as an enterprise voice-data networking system as well as a global enterprise networking system. McGraw-Hill's Data communications Magazine included the IPX in its list of "20 Most Significant Communications Products of the Last 20 Years" in a 1992 edition.
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