Vendor lineage
Extreme Networks
Building RNP's metropolitan research networks, and the one vendor here that is also a platform taught today.
This one closes a circle. Enterasys, the second half of the very first chapter of this career, was acquired by Extreme Networks in 2013, and the same year brought a return to that lineage from the other side: deploying Extreme in the field. Working through one of Brazil's first and best Extreme Networks partners, the work built metropolitan research networks for RNP, Brazil's National Education and Research Network.
The RedeComep deployment, 2013 to 2014
The project was the physical build-out of RNP's RedeComep program, Redes Comunitárias de Educação e Pesquisa, the initiative that gave Brazilian cities community-run metropolitan networks for education and research. Extreme nodes went in across Campinas and its region in São Paulo, the twin cities of Petrolina in Pernambuco and Juazeiro in Bahia, Marabá in Pará, and Castanhal in Pará. Each city's network was a long-distance metropolitan-area optical ring running EAPS, Extreme's Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching, the ring-resiliency protocol that keeps a fibre ring converged when a span fails, connecting RNP's point of presence to the federal and state higher-education and scientific-research institutions it served.
EXOS training and knowledge transfer
Installing the nodes was only half of it. The other half was making the local teams self-sufficient: delivering ExtremeXOS (EXOS) Switching and Routing training, and the knowledge transfer that goes with it, how their systems had been configured, how the whole thing worked, and how to manage, troubleshoot, and expand it once the deployment team had moved on. Handing over the ability to run and grow the network was the point.
Certifications
Extreme Networks Certified Instructor. Extreme is one of the vendors in the instructor portfolio; the current authorizations are listed under Training. The work here, in 2013 to 2014, was field deployment and training delivery.
Founding stories
Extreme Networks
Three colleagues from Network Peripherals founded Extreme in May 1996 to build wire-speed Ethernet switching for the gigabit era. Gordon Stitt - who had co-founded Network Peripherals itself - took the CEO chair he would hold for a decade. Stephen Haddock, the CTO, was not just building to the Gigabit Ethernet standard; he was an editor of it, and chaired the IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation committee. Herb Schneider, VP of Engineering, had spent 1981 to 1990 at National Semiconductor working on the industry's early Ethernet and FDDI chipsets before running LAN switch development at Network Peripherals. Norwest, AVI, Trinity, and Kleiner Perkins backed them - and purple became the color of performance Ethernet.
The timeline
- Founded by the people writing the standard
May 1996: the Network Peripherals trio starts Extreme in Cupertino, betting that multilayer Ethernet switching at wire speed - ATM performance at Ethernet cost - is where campus networking is going.
- Summit1
The first product ships: Summit1, among the pioneering wire-speed Gigabit Ethernet switches - with the BlackDiamond modular chassis following to anchor the high end, and ExtremeWare (later ExtremeXOS) as the software spine.
- The fourth 1999 IPO on these pages
April 9, 1999: Extreme lists on NASDAQ as EXTR - the same golden window that floated Brocade, Foundry, and Juniper. Gordon Stitt runs the company until August 2006; Ed Meyercord, CEO since April 2015, leads the era that follows.
- The consolidator decade opens: Enterasys
Announced September 12, 2013: Extreme acquires Enterasys for roughly $180 million in cash - the Cabletron lineage, and the network-management DNA that becomes central to Extreme's software story. Rodolfo's own Extreme chapter opens the same season: the 2013-2014 RNP RedeComep metro deployments told above.
Prior-round canon (Cabletron/Enterasys page).
- Rodolfo's field chapterRodolfo's chapter
2013 to 2014: field deployment and training delivery on Extreme gear in Brazil - the first Extreme chapter, eight years before the instructor authorization made it the active one.
- Zebra's WLAN: the Symbol and Motorola heritage
Announced September 13 and completed October 28, 2016 for approximately $55 million in cash: Zebra Technologies' wireless LAN business - the WiNG operating system, NSight, and AirDefense - whose lineage runs back through Motorola Solutions (Zebra's $3.45 billion 2014 purchase) to Symbol Technologies. Meyercord calls the result the number-three provider in enterprise campus networking.
Extreme 10-Q FY2017; Zebra 10-K FY2016/FY2017.
- Two more bloodlines in one year
July 14, 2017: the Avaya Networking business closes - $100 million headline, $79.8 million net - bringing the SynOptics-Wellfleet-Bay-Nortel DNA home. October 2017: Brocade's data center routing business (the Foundry lineage - SLX, VDX, MLX) arrives from Broadcom for $55 million. In four years, Extreme has gathered the estates of three of this section's other pages.
Extreme 10-K/10-Q figures; prior-round canon (Nortel-Bay and Brocade pages).
- Aerohive: the cloud becomes the platform
Announced June 26 and completed August 9, 2019, at approximately $272 million: Aerohive's cloud-managed wireless and SD-WAN - the foundation on which ExtremeCloud IQ is built, turning a decade of acquired hardware estates into one cloud-managed portfolio.
- SD-WAN, and a teaching chapter beginsRodolfo's chapter
September 15, 2021: Infovista's Ipanema SD-WAN business joins. The same year, Rodolfo becomes an Extreme Networks Certified Instructor - the start of the one relationship in this career section that is still active in the classroom today.
- The lineage roll call
By its own account, Extreme's merger history carries the networking DNA of at least nineteen companies - among them Digital, Cabletron, Enterasys, Symbol, Motorola, Zebra, Wellfleet, SynOptics, Bay Networks, Nortel, Avaya, Foundry, Brocade, and Aerohive. Four of those stories have their own pages in this section; they all end here.
Flagship products and solutions
- Summit and BlackDiamondThe founding franchises: wire-speed gigabit fixed switches and the modular chassis that carried campus and metro Ethernet - including the EAPS optical rings of Rodolfo's RNP deployments.
- ExtremeXOSThe modular operating system descended from ExtremeWare - the EXOS that Rodolfo deployed in the field in 2013-2014 and teaches today.
- Fabric Engine and VOSSThe Avaya-descended fabric line: shortest-path-bridging networking from the Bay and Nortel bloodline, reborn as Extreme's fabric story.
- Wireless: WiNG to Wi-Fi 7The Symbol-Motorola-Zebra WLAN heritage plus Aerohive's cloud management - merged into the ExtremeWireless portfolio and AirDefense security.
- ExtremeCloud IQThe Aerohive-built cloud management plane unifying the whole estate - and the platform behind the ExtremeCloud IQ courses Rodolfo delivers as a certified instructor.
Key innovations
- Standards from the insideExtreme's CTO co-wrote the rules of the game - an editor of the Gigabit Ethernet standard and chair of the link aggregation effort - so the products were standards-native from day one.
- Wire-speed multilayer switchingSummit1 helped prove that Layer 3 at gigabit wire speed on Ethernet economics beat ATM's complexity - the bet the whole campus market eventually made.
- EAPS resilient ringsThe Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching protocol brought sub-second ring failover to metro Ethernet - the mechanism at the heart of the RedeComep optical rings Rodolfo built on.
- Consolidation as strategyFive acquisitions in eight years - Enterasys, Zebra WLAN, Avaya Networking, Brocade data center, Aerohive - executed as a deliberate second act: buy the estates of the pioneers, unify them in the cloud.
Main markets
Extreme is where this section's stories converge: the Cabletron page, the Nortel-Bay page, and the Brocade-Foundry page all end at deals recorded here - one company quietly assembling the hub wars' surviving DNA into a cloud-managed enterprise portfolio.
Rodolfo's relationship is unique in this section: field deployment in 2013-2014 (RNP RedeComep metro rings on EXOS and EAPS), and instruction ever since 2021 - Extreme is the one career-page vendor he still teaches, with nine authorized courses in the portfolio.
Analyst standing
- At the Zebra WLAN close, Extreme positioned itself as the number-three provider in enterprise campus networking, with the acquired WLAN assets expected to add over $115 million in annualized revenue.
- The consolidator decade by the numbers: Enterasys ~$180M (2013), Zebra WLAN ~$55M (2016), Avaya Networking $79.8M net (2017), Brocade data center $55M (2017), Aerohive ~$272M (2019) - roughly $640 million to gather what rivals spent tens of billions building.