The Wollongong Group
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Defunct | 1995 |
| Fate | Acquired by Attachmate |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California , United States |
| Products | UNIX emulator Eunice, TCP/IP protocol suites for VAX VMS, AT&T UNIX Version 7, IBM PC; PATHway TCP/IP solution |
Number of employees | 165 (1995) |
The Wollongong Group, Inc. (TWG) was a pioneering enterprise in bringing software based on the Unix operating system to the commercial market. Established to distribute a Unix Version 6 port created at the University of Wollongong in Australia, the firm conducted its business from Palo Alto, California between 1980 and 1995.
TWG earned a reputation as an innovator in the creation and commercialization of TCP/IP protocol solutions. When it was acquired by rival company Attachmate in 1995, TWG reported annual revenues of $40 million and had a workforce of 165 employees.
Commercializing TCP/IP and the Internet
The foundation of Wollongong’s product portfolio lay largely in software developed within academic settings and available in the public domain. Among their principal products were:
- Eunice, a UNIX emulator designed for the VAX VMS platform (originally developed at SRI International)
- TCP/IP protocol suites tailored for:
- VAX VMS (derived from Berkeley TCP/IP)
- AT&T UNIX Version 7 (also based on Berkeley code)
- IBM PC (adapted from MIT's PC-IP by John Romkey)
The company entered into licensing partnerships with prominent firms such as Philips for their P9000 Unix systems and Cray Research. These offerings were promoted through trade magazines like Computerworld and Hardcopy, marking some of the earliest commercially supported TCP/IP solutions available. Significantly, their PC-based TCP/IP product allowed users without technical expertise to connect to the Internet using hardware priced under $3,000—roughly one-tenth the cost of other alternatives at that time.
Original Internet work
Their dedicated TCP/IP solution was branded as PATHway.
By the mid-1980s, numerous Wollongong personnel played key roles in advancing Internet technologies. They authored the initial Internet tunneling standard (RFC1088) and developed the first SNMP Management Information Base (RFC1066). Noteworthy contributors included David H. Crocker (Email), Dr. Marshall Rose (SNMP), Karl Auerbach (NetBIOS, SNMP), Narayan Mohanram (TCP/IP on UNIX), Jerry Scott (TCP/IP on VMS), Leo McLaughlin III, and John Bartas (TCP/IP on IBM PC). Many former Wollongong staff went on to establish influential Internet technology firms such as Epilogue Technologies, Taos Mountain Software, Interniche Technologies, and iPass Inc..