Every time a phone loaded a web page in 2007, the data passed through a box most people never heard of. Starent Networks made those boxes. Its gateways sat inside wireless carriers' networks and handled the traffic between the radio towers and the internet. Starent went public that June, the same month the first iPhone went on sale. Mobile data was about to explode, and Starent sold the equipment carriers needed to keep up.

Built for Traffic Jams

Ashraf Dahod founded Starent in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in August 2000. It took the company until 2003 to ship its first commercial product. Starent's platform was built to manage huge numbers of mobile data sessions at once, and to add new services like video and messaging through software. The bet was that carriers would soon carry far more data than voice, and that the gear they already owned was not built for it. Starent's chief customers were large mobile operators.

Cisco Pays Up

Starent priced at $12 a share in June 2007 and listed on Nasdaq under STAR. Smartphones arrived just as its gear was ready, and the business grew with them. In October 2009 Cisco agreed to buy Starent for $35 a share in cash, nearly three times the offering price, in a deal valued at about $2.9 billion. The sale closed in December 2009, and Starent became part of Cisco's mobile networking group.

Cover: The Star, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the star of the stage (Starent).