Leonard Bosack

Last updated
Leonard Bosack
Born1952 (age 68–69)
Pennsylvania, U.S.
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania
Stanford University
Known forCo-Founder of Cisco Systems
Spouse(s) Sandy Lerner (divorced)

Leonard X. Bosack (born 1952) is a co-founder of Cisco Systems, an American-based multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking and communications technology, and services. His net worth is approximately $200 million. [1] He was awarded the Computer Entrepreneur Award in 2009 for co-founding Cisco Systems and pioneering and advancing the commercialization of routing technology and the profound changes this technology enabled in the computer industry. [1]

Contents

He is largely responsible for pioneering the widespread commercialization of local area network (LAN) technology to connect geographically disparate computers over a multiprotocol router system, which was an unheard-of technology at the time. In 1990, Cisco's management fired Cisco co-founder Sandy Lerner and Bosack resigned. [2] As of 2010, Bosack was the CEO of XKL LLC, a privately funded engineering company which explores and develops optical networks for data communications. [3]

Background

Born in Pennsylvania in 1952 to Polish Catholic family, Bosack graduated from La Salle College High School in 1969. In 1973, Bosack graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science, and joined the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as a hardware engineer. In 1979, he was accepted into Stanford University, and began to study computer science. During his time at Stanford, he was credited for becoming a support engineer for a 1981 project to connect all of Stanford's mainframes, minis, LISP machines, and Altos.

His contribution was to work on the network router that allowed the computer network under his management to share data from the Computer Science Lab with the Business School's network. He met his wife Sandra Lerner at Stanford, where she was the manager of the Business School lab, and the couple married in 1980. [4] Together in 1984, they started Cisco in Menlo Park.

Cisco

In 1984, Bosack co-founded Cisco Systems with his then partner (and now ex-wife) Sandy Lerner. Their aim was to commercialize the Advanced Gateway Server. The Advanced Gateway Server was a revised version of the Stanford router built by William Yeager and Andy Bechtolsheim. Bosack and Lerner designed and built routers in their house, and experimented using Stanford's network. Initially, Bosack and Lerner went to Stanford with a proposition to start building and selling the routers, but the school refused. It was then that they founded their own company, and named it "Cisco," taken from the name of nearby San Francisco. [5] It is widely reported that Lerner and Bosack designed the first router so that they could connect the incompatible computer systems of the Stanford offices they were working in so that they could send letters to each other. However, this is an untrue legend. [6] [7]

Cisco's product was developed in their garage and was sold beginning in 1986 by word of mouth. In their first month alone, Cisco was able to land contracts worth more than $200,000. The company produced revolutionary technology such as the first multiport router-specific line cards and sophisticated routing protocols, giving them domination over the market-place. Cisco went public in 1990, the same year that Bosack resigned. [2] Bosack and Lerner walked away from Cisco with $170 million after being forced out by the professional managers the firm's venture capitalists brought in. [4] [5] Bosack and Lerner divorced in the early 1990s.

In 1996, Cisco's revenues amounted to $5.4 billion, making it one of Silicon Valley's biggest success stories. In 1998, the company was valued at over $6 billion and controlled over three-quarters of the router business. [4] [5]

Achievements

Along with co-founding Cisco Systems, Bosack is largely responsible for first pioneering the widespread commercialization of local area network (LAN). He and his fellow staff members at Stanford were able to successfully link the university's 5,000 computers across a 16-square-mile (41 km2) campus area. This contribution is significant in its context because, at that time, technology like that which LAN used was unheard of. Their challenge had been to overcome incompatibility issues, in order to create the first true LAN system. [2]

Bosack has also held significant technical leadership roles at AT&T Bell Labs and the Digital Equipment Corporation. After earning his master's degree in computer science from Stanford University, he became Director of Computer Facilities for the university's Department of Computer Science. He became a key contributor to the emerging ARPAnet, which was the beginning of today's Internet. [2]

Bosack's most recent technological advancements include his creation of new in-line fiber optic amplification systems that are capable of achieving unprecedented data transmission latency speeds of 6.071 milliseconds (fiber plus equipment latency, fiber latency alone would be at least 4.106 milliseconds based on the speed of light [8] ) over 1231 kilometers of fiber, which is roughly the distance between Chicago and New York City. Bosack was inspired by his belief that by leveraging the inherent, but often untapped, physics of fiber optic components, data transmission speeds can be increased with devices that use less power, less space and require less cooling. [2]

Charity

Together, Bosack and Lerner have a charitable foundation and trust funded with 70% of the money from the sale of their Cisco stock. The foundation is recognized for financing a wide range of animal welfare and science projects, such as The Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. [4] [9] It has also purchased an English manor house, Chawton House, once owned by Jane Austen's brother that has become a research center on 18th and 19th-century women writers. [4]

Controversy

In December 2001, a Mercury News article cited that a Stanford web site credits only Bosack and Lerner with developing the device that allowed computer networks to communicate intelligently with one another, despite Cisco spokeswoman Jeanette Gibson's claim that it was a group effort. Due to the nature of the collaboration, it is unable to be determined who did what during the process. [10]

Related Research Articles

Ethernet Computer networking technology

Ethernet is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3. Ethernet has since been refined to support higher bit rates, a greater number of nodes, and longer link distances, but retains much backward compatibility. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as Token Ring, FDDI and ARCNET.

Local area network Computer network that connects devices over a limited area

A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger geographic distance, but also generally involves leased telecommunication circuits.

Latency from a general point of view is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed, but, known within gaming circles as "lag", latency is a time interval between the input to a simulation and the visual or auditory response, often occurring because of network delay in online games.

Router (computing) Device that connects computer networks

A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers perform the traffic directing functions on the Internet. Data sent through the internet, such as a web page or email, is in the form of data packets. A packet is typically forwarded from one router to another router through the networks that constitute an internetwork until it reaches its destination node.

Wide area network Computer network that connects devices across a large distance and area

A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area for the primary purpose of computer networking. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.

Metropolitan area network Computer network serving a populated area

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) in a city into a single larger network which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network. The term is also used to describe the interconnection of several local area networks in a metropolitan area through the use of point-to-point connections between them.

Cisco Systems American multinational technology company

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in San Jose, California, in the center of Silicon Valley. Cisco develops, manufactures and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other high-technology services and products. Through its numerous acquired subsidiaries, such as OpenDNS, Webex, Jabber and Jasper, Cisco specializes in specific tech markets, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), domain security and energy management. On January 25, 2021, Cisco reincorporated in Delaware.

Internet access Individual connection to the internet

Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet service providers (ISPs) delivering connectivity at a wide range of data transfer rates via various networking technologies. Many organizations, including a growing number of municipal entities, also provide cost-free wireless access and landlines.

Campus network A computer network linking smaller networks of a campus, such as for a business or university

A campus network, campus area network, corporate area network or CAN is a computer network made up of an interconnection of local area networks (LANs) within a limited geographical area. The networking equipments and transmission media are almost entirely owned by the campus tenant / owner: an enterprise, university, government etc. A campus area network is larger than a local area network but smaller than a metropolitan area network (MAN) or wide area network (WAN).

Sandy Lerner, is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She co-founded Cisco Systems, and used the money from its sale to pursue interests in animal welfare and women's writing. One of her main projects, Chawton House, is in England, but most of her work remains in the United States.

William "Bill" Yeager is an American engineer. He is best known for being the inventor of a packet-switched, "Ships in the Night," multiple-protocol router in 1981, during his 20-year tenure at Stanford's Knowledge Systems Laboratory as well as the Stanford University Computer Science department. The code routed Parc Universal Packet (PUP), XNS, IP and CHAOSNet. The router used Bill's Network Operating System (NOS). The NOS also supported the EtherTIPS that were used throughout the Stanford LAN for terminal access to both the LAN and the Internet. This code was licensed by Cisco Systems in 1987 and comprised the core of the first Cisco IOS. This provided the groundwork for a new, global communications approach.

On a local area network, token passing is a channel access method where a signal called a token is passed between nodes to authorize that node to communicate. In contrast to polling access methods, there is no pre-defined "master" node. The most well-known examples are IBM Token Ring and ARCNET, but there were a range of others, including FDDI, which was popular in the early to mid 1990s.

Computer network Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a group of computers that use a set of common communication protocols over digital interconnections for the purpose of sharing resources located on or provided by the network nodes. The interconnections between nodes are formed from a broad spectrum of telecommunication network technologies, based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

Latency refers to a short period of delay between when an audio signal enters a system and when it emerges. Potential contributors to latency in an audio system include analog-to-digital conversion, buffering, digital signal processing, transmission time, digital-to-analog conversion and the speed of sound in the transmission medium.

In capital markets, low latency is the use of algorithmic trading to react to market events faster than the competition to increase profitability of trades. For example, when executing arbitrage strategies the opportunity to "arb" the market may only present itself for a few milliseconds before parity is achieved. To demonstrate the value that clients put on latency, in 2007 a large global investment bank has stated that every millisecond lost results in $100m per annum in lost opportunity.

The Stanford University Network, also known as SUN, SUNet or SU-Net is the campus computer network for Stanford University.

Internet Routing in Space

Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) was a program to build a radiation-tolerant IP router created by Cisco Systems for satellite and related spacecraft. It was a follow-on from Cisco's earlier CLEO router in space on the UK-DMC satellite. The Cisco Space Router was launched to geostationary orbit on board Intelsat 14 (IS-14), a spacecraft built by Space Systems/Loral for satellite operator Intelsat, in November 2009. IRIS was evaluated by the United States Department of Defense by way of a JCTD. The Space Router runs Cisco IOS software and also contains an onboard Software-defined radio running satellite modem waveforms. The United States Department of Defense used the JCTD to evaluate the reduced latency, improved throughput and increased flexibility provided by the Space Router.

The Computer Entrepreneur Award was created in 1982 by the IEEE Computer Society, for individuals with major technical or entrepreneurial contributions to the computer industry. The work must be public, and the award is not given until fifteen years after the developments. The physical award is a chalice from sterling silver and under the cup a gold-plated crown.

XKL

Based in Redmond, Washington XKL, LLC, is an American company that develops optical transport technologies. Founded in 1991, XKL is led by Cisco Systems co-founder Len Bosack who also used to work for DEC and Bell Labs. Under Bosack, Cisco commercialized local area network (LAN) technology to connect geographically to computers over a multiprotocol router system.

Ashwin Gumaste is an Indian computer engineer and institute chair professor at the department of computer science and engineering of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is known for his work on Carrier Ethernet Switch routers—the largest technology transfer between any IIT and industry.

References

  1. 1 2 "Computer Entrepreneur Award" Archived December 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine . IEEE Computer Society. Accessed December 30, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Len Bosack 2009 Computer Entrepreneur Award Recipient". IEEE Computer Society. Accessed December 30, 2010.
  3. ↑ "About" Archived October 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine . XKL LLC. Accessed December 30, 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Does Pink Make you Puke?". Forbes . Accessed December 30, 2010.
  5. 1 2 3 "Adult Supervision". Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet . Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Accessed December 30, 2010.
  6. ↑ "Router man". Networkworld.com. Retrieved November 2, 2012.
  7. ↑ Pete Carey (January 12, 2001). "A start-up's true tale". Mercury News .
  8. ↑ "Calculated as 1 / (speed of light / 1231 km)" . Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  9. ↑ "Center for Conservation Biology". University of Washington. Accessed December 30, 2010.
  10. ↑ Pete Carey (December 1, 2001). "A start-up's true tale". Mercury News . Accessed December 30, 2010.

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