Ascend Communications

From Free net encyclopedia

Ascend Communications was an Alameda, California based manufacturer of communications equipment that was later purchased by Lucent Technologies in 1999.

Ascend Communications designed and manufactured equipment for high density dialup installations, most notably the MAX TNT, which allowed for a ds3 of dialup lines to be terminated in a few rack units. Customers such as AOL, Earthlink, and UUnet purchased hundreds of thousands of MAX TNT access servers during the dialup days of the internet. Many companies still use MAX TNT for dialup (look for TNT in dialup hostnames).

Ascend Communications also designed and manufactured high density carrier switches, including the BSTDX-8000 frame relay switch and the CBX-500 and GX-550 ATM switches. The BSTDX and CBX/GX line were the workhorses of most RBOC ATM and Frame networks throughout the 1990's and into the 21st century.

Ascend manufactured several acquired technologies, such as the Cascade/Sahara multiservice ATM edge boxes (SA300/600/1200), which offered features found in no other hardware at the time.

The complete product suite made Ascend an attractive asset, and was acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1999. The merger was one of the largest mergers in history ($24B USD).

Ascend's stock (traded under the Nasdaq symbol ASND), was one of the strongest momentum stocks of the mid-1990s.