Ethernet entrepreneur and World Wide Packets founder Bernard Daines dies at 69

Bernard Daines, one of the early commercial Ethernet pioneers, passed away last Thursday morning after a long illness, reports The Spokesman-Review.

Bernard Daines pioneer

Bernard Daines

According to his brother Dan Daines, he would have been 70 on April 12.

Daines, who had been a diabetic, had to undergo regular dialysis treatments, but in recent weeks his condition deteriorated.

In the Ethernet market, Daines is widely known as the founder of a number of notable Ethernet switching vendors, including World Wide Packets and Packet Engines.

World Wide Packets, which had gained prominence as a supplier to AT&T (NYSE: T) and a number of smaller utilities deploying fiber to the home (FTTH) networks, was acquired by Ciena in 2008.

Earlier, Packet Engines was acquired by Alcatel (NYSE: ALU) as a way for the French company to gain a larger foothold in the Ethernet market. That acquisition proved to be somewhat controversial as Alcatel later decided to cease production on its PowerRail Distribution Routers in 2001 and lay off 150 of its employees in Spokane, Wash.

In addition, Daines was one of the founders of TierPoint, a Liberty Lake, Washington-based data center operation that had recently been acquired by Cequel Data Centers.

Daines showed an early talent and interest in computers. While in high school he built a language-translation computer for a science fair and became the first graduate of Brigham Young University's computer science program in 1969.

For more:
- The Spokesman-Review has this article

Related articles:
Ciena rolls out new Ethernet access gear, capabilities
Ciena announced the acquisition of WWP back in January