Every new DSL customer had to be logged in, given an address, and routed to the right internet provider, and Redback built the box that did it. In 1999 phone companies were rolling out DSL and needed a way to handle the flood. Redback's Subscriber Management System sat at the edge of the carrier network. Redback went public in May 1999, as broadband moved from trial to mass market.

A New Layer of Network

Gaurav Garg and Asher Waldfogel founded Redback in Silicon Valley in 1996. The bet was that broadband would create a new layer of the network, between the access lines and the internet core. That layer would need its own equipment. Redback's SMS product won quick adoption among carriers deploying DSL. It became one of the most celebrated networking start-ups of its moment.

Siara, Bankruptcy, Ericsson

Redback priced its offering at $23 a share in May 1999, and the stock leapt on its first day. That same year it bought Siara Systems in a stock deal worth billions. Its value soared, and then the telecom crash erased most of it. In 2003 Redback restructured through a prepackaged bankruptcy and emerged as a smaller company. Ericsson acquired Redback in 2007 for about $2.1 billion.

Cover: Spider, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a spider (the redback).