High-performance networking specialist Network Peripherals Inc, which has found FDDI fibre networking technology too costly to base its business on, has taken a further step towards Fast Ethernet with the $6m acquisition of Netvision Corp, a Long Island-based manufacturer of high-bandwidth local area network switching and Gigabit Ethernet technologies. Netvision’s 12 engineers, headed by president and founder Robert Zecha, will form a new advanced technology group at Network Peripherals. Seven years old Netvision have been developing Gigabit technology for two years, working as consultants with other companies, and has produced 24 application specific integrated circuits and has designed its own low-cost switching technology. Last February Network Peripherals acquired Fast Ethernet workgroup specialist Nucom Systems Inc for $21m (CI No 2,857). The company attributed its recent first quarter loss of $754,000 to lower sales of its FDDI products.
