Comments on: The Father of VoIP Moves On

By: Cari

Cari — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:43:08 +0000

Brian Cochran was the person who left for school. George Fargo left Selsius to take the VP of Engineering role back at Intecom. Ask a chic, we never forget.

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:07:26 +0000

It looks like Jeff Connelly is moving to TSBU to work Telepresence.

By: Another One Bites the Dust

Another One Bites the Dust — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:55:28 +0000

[...] the crew at Intecom that was to eventually be spun off as Selsius Systems under the leadership of Richard Platt and David Tucker. While at Intecom, Dave worked with Richard and others to develop what is arguably [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:10:26 +0000

@Jeff:

Of course there’s no doubt that people were able to move voice over networks before Selsius or 3Com. In this article I was concentrating on VoIP, so the previous implementations get short shrift. In the long run, they end up being dead-end evolutionary branches, because, as you point out, once the WAN converted to IP, it was game over. Certainly some of their technology survived, but for the most part, sadly, they will be forgotten.

Believe it or not I was actually a user of a Lexar phone system in the early-80s. It used single-bit differential PCM – a crazy scheme that worked just fine for them, but never caught on anywhere else. I can’t remember all the purported advantages, but I guess not having to worry about framing was probably nice!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:08:44 +0000

Should the ‘debate’ be limited to Cisco v 3Com? Truth-be-known, there were several other contenders to LAN-based telephony, if you consider “LAN-based” as being 802 compliant, not just “IP”. The mid-1980′s hosted, among others: Z-Tel PNX (token ring IEEE 802.5); CXC Rose (IBM compatible token-passing rings); Intecoms IBX; Harris 20-20, Lexar 1000 (first to use ADPMC); GTE Omni (more x.25); the list goes on a bit from there. The big play here is what happened to the IP-and-SNA war fought with Cisco and IBM.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:43:08 +0000

A coworker at Cisco had this to say about 3Com’s NBX technology:

As an early adopter of “3Com” NBX, a couple of extra facts to support your position. First, the NBX product was not an IP-PBX until significantly later than 1998, it was an Ethernet-PBX. We were able to get it to operate over our ISP’s WAN only by tunneling layer-2. This was definitely non-trivial to set up as we had to build the tunnel through each router hop for each remote phone. I remember the vendor, a local VAR, really didn’t get why we’d want to do that :-) We made it to a 3Com case study, but the only article I could find out there is in chinese …

http://www0.ccidnet.com/tech/app/2001/02/28/58_1761.html

Also, 3Com didn’t announce plans to buy NBX until Feb 1999.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:50:33 +0000

Here’s the working version of the Selsius Systems roster, including a parenthetical note on where the person is currently working. Please comment with names that should be added or removed. People marked with a ‘*’ were Selsius Systems employees, but left before the acquisition.

John Alexander – Cisco/Call Manager
David Armstrong – Cisco/Enterprise Voice HW
Darren Baker – Cisco/Emerging Technologies
Rick Baugh – Cisco/Linksys One
Bob Bell – Cisco/Enteprise Voice HW
Jim Brasher – Cisco/Enterprise Voice HW
Kevin Brown – IPcelerate
Mick Buchanan – Cisco/Call Manager CAP
Bryce Burgess – Cisco/Call Manager CAP
Carrie C’deBaca – Cisco/Commercial Sales
Rita Chow – Cisco/Call Manager
Paul Clark – Cisco/Linksys One
*Jeff Connelly – Cisco/Enterprise Voice HW
David Corley – Cisco/Linksys One
Jack Crabb – Retired???
Joe Duffy – Cisco/Call Manager
Rick Dunlap – Cisco/Voice
Gil Fernandez – ???
Roger Field – ???
Bill Forsythe – Cisco/Call Manager
Steve Foster – Cisco/Linksys
Duane Guthrie – Cisco/Call Manager
Paul Hahn – Cisco/Linksys
Joel Hamilton – ???
Scott Henning – Cisco/Call Manager
Tom Hewett – IPcelerate
Ron Higgins – Retired
Pascal Huart – Cisco/Voice Hardware
Mike Hunter – Retired???

Alan Liss – ???
Clay Luther – Cisco/Voice
Mike McClung – Cisco/Linksys One
Larry Michalewicz – Cisco/IPCBU Marketing
Charlie Munro – Cisco/Call Manager
Nancy Murdock – ???
Ted Oliger – Cisco/Call Manager CAP
Chris Pearce – Cisco/Call Manager
*David Platzer – Cisco/Linksys One
Richard Platt – Retired ???
Ken Pruski – Cisco/Call Manager
Chris Redmon – ???
Vince Russo – Retired day of acquisition!
Jeff Sanders – Cisco/Linksys One
Susan Sauter – Cisco/Voice Hardware
Dave Sawyer – ???
Brian Sedgley – Cisco/Call Manager
Mollyn Shew – Cisco/Corporate Event Marketing
Ann Smith – Cisco/Call Manager CAP
Tim Thompson – Cisco/Linksys One
James Tighe – Cisco/Linksys One
David Tucker – Cisco/Linksys One
Scott Veibell – Cisco/Call Manager CAP
Dan Walker – Cisco/Call Manager
Delon Whetten – Cisco/Call Manager
Karen Wilkinson – ???
Conrad Zgliczynski – Cisco/Call Manager CAP

Research needed:

Brian Something…. – went back to school right after acquisition (ask Brian Sedgley, Delon Whetton, or Triston Whetton if they remember his name
Jean Marie Deny (Matra person – might have only been Incite)
Eric Linn ??? (he might have quit before Selsius; was definitely in Incite)(Larry thinks Incite only)
George Fargo (pretty sure he quit before Selsius; definitely in Incite)(Larry thinks this is a possible Selsius)

False positives:
Clint Entrop – Cisco/Call Manager – Incite only