Bay buys Rapid City for Gigabit Ethernet wares SAN MATEO - Bay Networks' acquisition of Gigabit Ethernet start-up company Rapid City Communications adds a critical piece to the company's switching strategy but raises questions about some future product directions.
The company acquired privately held Rapid City in a stock swap valued at about $US155 million. The company's 57 employees will become a new unit in Bay Networks' enterprise division, and Rapid City CEO Joe Kennedy will become a vice-president and head of the unit.
Rapid City announced in March a family of pre-standard Gigabit Ethernet LAN switches, which will begin shipping in the fourth quarter.
The switches can route IP packets at wire speed between subnets and switch within subnets, simultaneously using the same ASIC. They said the devices can provide throughput as high as seven million packets per second.
