The Dartware Story
“I was really interested in the founders' story. They were network guys who knew a lot about hard platforms.”
Brian Magnuson
CEO
Cascade Networks/Last Mile Gear
From Network Managers...
By the early 1990's, Dartmouth College had connected all residence halls, academic buildings, and administrative offices (a network outlet at every desk) through a campus-wide network that relied on over 100 routers located in basements.
Rich Brown, Dartmouth's Network Manager, realized that existing diagnostic tools were too reactive for such a complex and far-flung network. He and his team used a text-based monitoring program to find the general location of problem routers. But time-to-fix depended on telnetting into various routers to find bottlenecks and stoppages, the particular elements that were to blame, and their precise location.
Rich wanted a solution that would allow him to be proactive; one that was easy-to-use and provided an at-a-glance-view of his network and quick access to status, performance, and other diagnostic information. And, he needed it to accommodate his mini-computer based routers (built using the same CPU and chassis of the New England Digital Synclavier equipment) that had limited memory and couldn't be programmed to speak SNMP.
There was no commercial solution. Rich enlisted Bill Fisher, then a computer science student at the College, to help him create a tool that would graphically map and monitor Dartmouth's network. Their Macintosh experience focused them on intuitive interfaces, graphic representation of complex systems, and ability to drill-down to additional information.
InterMapper was born. The College could view its entire network and quickly diagnose and fix problems before users experienced downtime. As more SNMP-speaking commercial equipment was brought on campus, InterMapper was extended to speak SNMP and utilize available data. After Bill graduated, he stayed on to continue developing InterMapper.
...to entrepreneurial software developers
Word of InterMapper's capabilities spread and people began to buy into the technology. In 1996, Dartmouth encouraged Rich and Bill to market InterMapper commercially. Sales growth soon warranted the support of a "real company." In April 2000, Rich, Bill, and Stuart Pompian secured title to InterMapper technology and founded Dartware LLC.
Today, thousands of organizations around the world rely on InterMapper and InterMapper add-ons to keep their networks up and running and users productive. The customer base is enthusiastic about InterMapper's easy to use, comprehensive feature set and Dartware support. Dartware's penchant for customer interaction (through calls, surveys, newsletters, etc.) keeps products tuned to true daily use requirements.