 NextHop Technologies, Inc.Company Description:NextHop Technologies, Inc. has its roots in academic innovation and now has emerged as an influential commercial enterprise. The company's history on the Internet dates to 1987. NextHop and its collaborators built the definitive architecture for Internet routing. Its flagship product, GateD, is the de facto standard for vendor-neutral routing software.NextHop develops and markets the most stable, fully functional, widely adopted suite of routing protocols available in the world today. Partnering with its customers and the industry, NextHop is the "Definitive Source" for empowering innovation in networking. The Past: Launching Internet Routing Architecture The first GateD code was developed at Cornell University in the 1980s. The group had been asked by the U.S. government to create the NSFNET, linking 14 supercomputer and educational sites to form a research network. In 1987, an early form of GateD was running in regional areas and a variant of it was running the NSFNET backbone. By 1995, Cornell University had brought the GateD software to the University of Michigan and the Merit GateD Consortium for non-profit commercial application. Sue Hares, NextHop's Founder and Chief Technical Officer, was instrumental in driving these early efforts. By 2000, it was apparent from the size of the consortium and the interest in the technology that the code was ready to be introduced as a commercial entity. Sue Hares founded NextHop Technologies, Inc. to deliver the code into the future. Success depended on broadening customer expectations and educating the market to the product's new direction. The Present: Implementing a New Business Model Since its inception, the GateD suite of routing code and protocols has evolved continually. As protocols were added, the code was tested rigorously and significantly improved. The sophistication of this Unix-based software was expanded to mirror the burgeoning complexities of the Internet. Every step along the way, new features and options were added to solve real-world implementation problems. Today, the NextHop GateD carrier-class software suite has the most complete set of routing protocols in the industry...including OSPF, BGP, IPv6, IS-IS, and Multicast. NextHop GateD routing software serves applications far beyond routers, including all intelligent devices that link to the network and transfer data: LAN switches, wireless access points, satellites, edge traffic and service aggregation boxes, core optical switching boxes, firewall and security devices, proxies, caches and load balancing. As network complexity increases, the challenge of providing optimal routing increases exponentially — as does delivering meaningful ROI. By choosing to put their trust in NextHop, engineers are partnering with an experienced company that can help them substantially improve time to market at a lower overall cost, mitigate technical risk, and capture sales opportunities first. The Future: Driving Network Innovation NextHop has guided the successful transition of its business model to capitalize on the immense opportunity at hand. In 2001, with a broad customer base already established, NextHop received venture capital funding from New Enterprise Associates. It retired the free version of the code from public distribution and has invested over 50 man-years of engineering and testing time to launch the code as a commercially viable product. NextHop's engineering team continues to deliver a complete solution set for its customers — from a rock-solid code set, to testing and documentation, APIs and support services — everything developers need when making their "build vs. buy" decision. With a heritage of technological innovation, the longest track record of successful deployment, and the largest share of the network routing industry's intellectual capital, no other company Worldwide Headquarters:
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