Alantec Corporation

Alantec Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets switching hubs for local area networks (LAN). The company offers multiprotocol and multilayer LAN switching products. The company was founded in 1987 and is based in San Jose, California.

Alantec specializes in a technology called multilayer LAN switching, which is used to connect corporate local area networks carrying data at relatively low speeds. As of February 1996, Alantec Corporation was acquired by FORE Systems, Inc. FORE Systems was a computer network switching equipment company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

FORE Systems, Inc was acquired by London-based Marconi Corporation plc to complement its Marconi Communications business on April 26, 1999. Marconi Communications had the world’s largest telecoms market. The US$4.5bn ($6.6 billion today) price tag for FORE Systems took a heavy toll on Marconi following the “burst of the dot-com bubble” in 2000-2001. In July 2001 Marconi plc suffered a 54% drop in its share price following suspension of trading of its shares, a profits warning and redundancies. In 2006, Ericsson purchased most all of Marconi, including the part that used to be FORE Systems.