Riverstone Networks
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Networking equipment |
| Founded | 1990s |
| Fate | Assets absorbed into Alcatel-Lucent after Chapter 11 bankruptcy |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara , United States |
| Parent | Alcatel-Lucent |
Riverstone Networks, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, was a manufacturer specializing in networking switching equipment. Emerging from the origins of Cabletron Systems and an early acquisition of YAGO, it established itself during the mid-1990s wave of Gigabit Ethernet startups. Currently, Riverstone operates as a division within Alcatel-Lucent, with its business activities ceasing following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by its present owners.
Company history
- 7 February 2006 – Partner company Lucent Technologies entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement to acquire Riverstone Networks
- 21 March 2006 – Lucent Technologies secured the bid for Riverstone Networks, outbidding Ericsson with a final price of $207 million
- 18 April 2006 – The merger process between Lucent Technologies and Alcatel commenced
- 1 December 2006 – Completion of the merger; Riverstone Networks’ assets were absorbed into Alcatel-Lucent
Products
Riverstone’s product line concentrated on multilayer switching devices and switch-routers optimized for IP over Ethernet applications, primarily targeting Metro Ethernet deployments and MPLS VPNs.
15000 Family
The 15000 series (15K) utilized line card processors to manage network traffic, thereby reducing the load on the central CPU, comparable to Cisco’s dCEF technology. These devices operated on ROS-X, a modular operating system featuring a command line interface similar to Cisco’s.
- 15008 – The flagship model capable of supporting up to 96 ports of 10/100 Ethernet, multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports, and up to two 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Future enhancements were planned to include ATM and Packet over SONET/SDH capabilities.
- 15100/15200 – Targeted at access and distribution layer functions, these semi-modular switches included fixed Gigabit Ethernet ports alongside GBIC uplinks supporting either 1 Gigabit or 10 Gigabit connections.
RS Family
The RS series consisted of flow-based multilayer switches running the ROS operating system, manageable via command line or SNMP protocols.
- 1x00 – Fixed configuration hardware models
- 3x00 – Semi-modular units with 32 fixed 100BaseT ports plus two modular expansion slots
- 8x00 – Fully modular chassis available in 8-slot (8000) and 16-slot (8600) variants; modules included Control Modules, various Ethernet interfaces, PoS, ATM, Serial connections, T1/E1, and T3/E3 cards
- 38000 – Fully modular design featuring vertical slots, distinct from other RS series models
ES Family
- ES 2010 – Fixed configuration multilayer switch with 24 ports of 10/100 Ethernet designed for network access and edge deployment scenarios; equipped with two GBIC ports for Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. The ES line did not support WAN interfaces or MPLS functionality.