computer networking founded 1991 ; 25 years ago 1991 founder len bosack headquarters kirkland washington u.s.a area served worldwide key people len bosack and sandra lerner products darkstar optical network hardware website www.xkl.com xkl llc was founded in 1991 and develops optical transport technologies . originally based in redmond washington its headquarters are now located in kirkland washington . 1 xkl is led by cisco systems co founder len bosack who also used to work for dec and bell labs . under bosack cisco commercialized local area network lan technology to connect geographically to computers over a multiprotocol router system . contents 1 history of xkl 2 products 2.1 toad 1 2.2 toad 2 2.3 darkstar dxm 3 notes 4 references 5 external links history of xkl edit in its earliest days xkl built a compact modern replacement toad 1 for a massive mainframe computer system pdp 10 that had gone out of production . the challenge at the time was to find a mainstream usage for a totally new technology a platform with a desktop sized footprint but incorporating technology that would bring the system into the 21st century . 2 xkl deployed darkstar technology that allows enterprises to take advantage of higher reliability and allow for more control over it resources at a lower cost . the plug and play system allow data network engineers to deploy their own optical transmission systems in metro regional and long distance networks . products edit toad 1 unit on display at the living computer museum in seattle wa toad 1 edit the toad 1 system also known as td 1 notes 1 was announced in 1993 and built as an extended version of the decsystem 20 from digital equipment corporation . the original inspiration was to build a desktop version of the popular pdp 10 and the name began as an acronym for ten on a desk . it was eventually built at xkl by veteran engineers from cisco dec hewlett packard and cdc . 3 xkl toad 2 on display at the living computer museum in seattle washington . full view of the xkl toad 2 on display at the living computer museum in seattle washington . it was the first xkl product produced and it became available for purchase in late 1995 . the toad 1 is a high performance i o oriented system with a 36 bit processor running tops 20 . it is a 36 bit multi user system that can provide service to over 100 users at a time . the toad 1 architecture incorporated modern peripherals and open bus architecture expanded physical and virtual memory while maintaining the tops 20 user environment . 1 toad 2 edit the toad 2 was built to replace the toad 1 and was a single chip reimplementation used as redundant control processors in networking equipment from xkl . it could be configured for tops 20 timesharing . 3 darkstar dxm edit first released in 2007 xkl installed the darkstar dxm at the california institute of technology as part of their supercomputing bandwidth challenge . it provided 5 times the bandwidth in excess of 100 gigabits sec than the existing system but was also smaller and used less power . 4 notes edit the toad 1 was referred to as the toad as a development codename and then changed to the td 1 as the original marketing name . it was then swtiched back to toad 1 before production began . references edit a b xkl flier . retrieved 29 june 2016 . about us xkl . www.xkl.com . a b exhibits living computer museum . www.livingcomputermuseum.org . xkl llc xkl supports caltech in supercomputing 08 bandwidth challenge . internet archive wayback machine . 6 october 2009 . archived from the original on october 6 2009 . retrieved 12 july 2016 . duffy jim . cisco founder wants to go faster farther . network world . retrieved 2009 06 01 . len bosack and xkl introduce do it yourself optical networking . glg group . retrieved 2007 08 08 . cisco founder pushes for diy optical networks . light reading . retrieved 2009 07 03 . len bosack speaks with erik linask at itexpo . tmcnet . retrieved 2010 10 06 . external links edit official website login into the living computer museum a portal into the paul allen collection of timesharing and interactive computers including an operational xkl toad 2 retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title xkl & oldid 740218855 categories american companies established in 1991hidden categories official website different in wikidata and wikipedia navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 19 september 2016 at 19 39 . text is available under the creative 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