Company Spotlight

Caspian Networks
When it comes to corporate pedigree, you can't get much better than Caspian Networks. The company was started in 1999 by Lawrence Roberts, one of the founding fathers of the Internet. In the mid-1960s, Roberts was chief scientist for the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, whose computer packet network ARPAnet evolved into the modern Internet. Roberts later founded Telenet, the first packet data communications carrier.

Now Roberts is hoping to transform today's Internet. In its latest announcement, Caspian says it has gained another $55 million in funding from its existing investors. Caspian is touting routing technology that lets communications service providers efficiently manage Internet protocol (IP) traffic across their networks. This type of control and optimization is increasingly important to service providers as IP-based traffic, which now includes video, gaming, music downloads, HDTV, and voice over IP (VoIP), gets heavier.