Farallon, later renamed Netopia, was a computer networking company headquartered in
Berkeley, and subsequently
Emeryville,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
, that produced a wide variety of products including bridges, repeaters and switches, and in their later Netopia incarnation, modems, routers, gateways, and Wi-Fi devices. The company also produced the NBBS (Netopia Broadband Server Software) and, as Farallon,
Timbuktu
Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou;
Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label= Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrat ...
remote administration software, as well as the MacRecorder, the first audio capture and manipulation products for the Macintosh (later sold to
Macromedia). The company was founded in 1986 and changed its name to Netopia in 1998. Farallon originated several notable technologies, including:
*
PhoneNet, an implementation of
AppleTalk over plain ("Cat-3") telephone wiring or, more commonly,
EIA-TIA 568A/B structured cabling systems. Many versions of the product were produced, but the original product was a commercialized version of a kit developed and produced by
BMUG, the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group in 1986.
* The StarController, a line of LocalTalk and Ethernet bridges and switches released in 1988 which integrated directly with EIA-TIA 568A/B structured cabling systems.
* EtherWave, an
ADB-powered three-port bridge in a
dongle form-factor which looked something like a manta ray. The two external ports were
10BASE-T and the ADB pigtail spoke an
overclocked 690kbps version of
LocalTalk. This served both to allow devices without expansion busses (commonly early
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
computers and
LaserWriter printers) to connect directly to Ethernet networks, and also to allow the daisy-chaining of multiple devices from a single Ethernet switch or bridge port. Later versions used Apple's "AAUI" version of the Attachment Unit Interface to achieve full 10mbps host connections.
* AirDock, an ADB-to-IrDA gateway which allowed devices with LocalTalk ports to communicate on IrDA infrared wireless networks.
Netopia acquired multiple companies in the home networking space including Cayman and DoBox, Inc. DoBox, Inc., founded by Nicole Toomey Davis, Bradley Davis and Matt Smith, was acquired in 2002 for its award-winning DoBox Family Firewall and Home Server Gateway.
Netopia was acquired by
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...
in the first quarter of 2007.
ISPs known to use Netopia modems include:
*
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...
in the United States
*
Sonic.net in the United States
*
Covad in the United States
*
eircom in Ireland
*
Swisscom in Switzerland
*
NextGenTel in Norway
*
France Télécom, Cegetel RSS, B3G Telecom, Nerim,
Easynet,
ClaranetMagic Onlinein France
References
External links
Homepageof Netopia
Netopia financial news from Google Finance
Companies based in Emeryville, California
Telecommunications companies of the United States
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