Airespace

Airespace, Inc., formerly Black Storm Networks, was a networking systems company founded in 2001, manufacturing wireless access points and controllers of the former. The company developed the AP-Controller model for fast deployment and the Lightweight Access Point Protocol, the precursor to the CAPWAP protocol.^[1][2][3]

Airespace, Inc.

Formerly	Black Storm Networks, Inc.
Industry	Computer networking
Founded	2001; 24 years ago (2001) in San Jose, California
Founder	Pat Calhoun Bob Friday Bob O'Hara Ajay Mishra
Defunct	March 2005 (2005-03)
Fate	Acquired by Cisco Systems
Website	airespace.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2004-04-13)

Corporate history

Airespace was founded in 2001 by Pat Calhoun,^[4] Bob Friday,^[5] Bob O'Hara,^[6]: 70 and Ajay Mishra.^[7] The company was venture backed by Storm Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Fidelity Investments, and Battery Ventures.^[8] In 2003, it entered into an agreement to provide OEM equipment to NEC.^[9] In 2004 it signed an agreement with Alcatel and Nortel to provide equipment to the two companies on an OEM basis.^{[10][11]: 8}

Airespace was first to market with integrated location tracking.^[12] Within a year and a half, the company grew rapidly into the market leader of enterprise Wi-Fi.^[13]

Cisco Systems acquired Airespace in 2005 for $450 million;^[14] this was one of 13 acquisitions Cisco made that year and the largest up to that point.^[15] Airespace products were merged into Cisco Aironet product line.^[16]