Ungermann-Bass
Ungermann-Bass, also known as UB and UB Networks, was a computer networking company in the 1980s to 1990s. Located in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley, UB was the first large networking company independent of any computer manufacturer. UB was founded by Ralph Ungermann and Charlie Bass. John Davidson, vice president of engineering, was one of the creators of NCP, the transport protocol of the ARPANET before TCP.

UB specialized in large enterprise networks connecting computer systems and devices from multiple vendors, which was unusual in the 1980s. At that time most network equipment came from computer manufacturers and usually used only protocols compatible with that one manufacturer's computer systems, such as IBM's SNA or DEC's DECnet. Many UB products initially used the XNS protocol suite, including the flagship Net/One, and later transitioned to TCP/IP as it became an industry standard in the late 1980s.

Before it became the industry standard, the Internet protocol suite TCP/IP was initially a "check box" item needed to qualify on prospective enterprise sales. As a network technology supplier to both Apple Inc. and Microsoft, in 1987-88 UB helped Apple implement their initial MacTCP offering and also helped Microsoft with a Winsock compatible software/hardware bundle for the Microsoft Windows platform. With the success of these offerings and of the Internet protocol TCP/IP, both Apple and Microsoft subsequently brought the Internet technology in-house and integrated it into their core products.

UB marketed a broadband (in the original technical sense) version of Ethernet known as 10BROAD36 in the mid 1980s. It was generally seen as hard to install. UB was one of the first network manufacturers to sell equipment that implemented Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. UB's AccessOne product line initially used the pre-standard StarLAN and, when it became standard, 10BASE-T.

In 1992, Ungermann Bass engineering in Andover, Mass produced the first Virtual Private Network. It was marketed as a "Virtual Network Architecture". The product's implementation utilized UB Ethernet switches, which were modified to add metadata to every packet which indicated which VPN originated the packet. Specialized segmentation and reassembly, which were compatible with Ethernet's spanning tree algorithm, was implemented in each switch to support jumbo packets. While this product was not successful, this technology was transferred to Cisco when UB was broken up a few years later. Cisco subsequently offered the first successful commercial VPN which included "tunneling" ISO layer 2 VPN LAN packets through layer 3 to interconnect two LANs via Cisco routers.

UB went public in 1983. It was bought by Tandem Computers in 1988. UB was sold in 1997 by Tandem to Newbridge Networks. Over the next several months, Newbridge laid off the bulk of the Ungermann-Bass employees, and closed the doors of the Santa Clara operation. Newbridge was later acquired by Alcatel, a French telecommunications company.
Q1301371
computer network
Concept
Q159260
Santa Clara, California
LOC
Q163820
Silicon Valley
LOC
None
Ralph Ungermann
UNK
Q5084499
Charlie Bass
PER
Q2582530
NCP
MEDIA
Q209372
transport protocol
Concept
Q177524
ARPANET
MISC
Q8803
TCP
Concept
Q37156
IBM
ORG
Q1503167
SNA
MEDIA
Q690079
DEC
ORG
Q1152931
DECnet
MEDIA
Q966967
XNS
MISC
Q81414
Internet protocol suite
Concept
Q312
Apple Inc.
ORG
Q2283
Microsoft
ORG
Q6722129
MacTCP
UNK
Q1501914
Winsock
MEDIA
Q1406
Microsoft Windows
Concept
Q194163
broadband
Concept
Q79984
Ethernet
Concept
Q169041
10BROAD36
UNK
Q102039327
Ethernet over twisted pair
Concept
Q1987958
StarLAN
UNK
Q102039327
10BASE-T
Concept
Q1783846
Tandem Computers
ORG
Q7017098
Newbridge Networks
ORG
Q509404
Alcatel
ORG
Q7884469
Ungermann-Bass
ORG
Q7884469
Ungermann-Bass
ORG
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1980
DATE
1990-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1990
DATE
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1980
DATE
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1980
DATE
1987-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1987
DATE
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1980
DATE
1992-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1992
DATE
1983-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1983
DATE
1988-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1988
DATE
1997-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1997
DATE
-88^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
-88
NUMBER
+10^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
10
NUMBER
+36^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
36
NUMBER
+10^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
10
NUMBER
+2^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
2
NUMBER
+3^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
3
NUMBER
founded by
located on terrain feature
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