Comment by AceJohnny2

While I'm at it, I want to write down the lifecycle of that company.

The router served as a "security endpoint", meaning it could "terminate" (decode), thousands of IPSec connections. Thus it would serve as the "border router" for a network operator.

The company's big hit was providing this product to NTT Docomo for its LTE infrastructure. NTT had the (turned out unique) architectural challenge where they controlled the base stations, the core network... but not the backhaul (connection between the base stations and core)! The backhaul was on shared leased network. So they needed to encrypt [1], hence the IPSec, and hence the need for a "router" that could receive all these connections and decode them to feed into their Core Network.

I joined the company shortly after they scored that huge contract, when they were flush with money and looking to grow.

NTT Docomo was a pioneer in LTE deployment, so our company tried to sell this operating model to the rest of the world... but no-one took it. Turns out most operators just own their backhaul, so didn't feel the need to encrypt, or at least have the same architecture as NTT.

So our company tried for a while to adapt our router (really, network middle-box, and really, its upgraded next version) for other emerging use-cases, but it was hard to get a grip both in emerging network architectures and against the incumbents (lol the number of times we had bugs with Cisco equipment which we proved was Cisco's fault but nope we just had to work around it).

The company was eventually bought at fire sale price by one that did cheap Software-Defined Networking on commodity hardware. Our expensive router was discontinued.

(Also, fuck Broadcom)

[1] It occurs to me that Snowden's revelations in 2013 happened during my tenure there. However the response of many operators was to have one fat encrypted pipe (which we didn't stand out for) rather than many small encrypted ones (which we did).

(edit: also working with NTT Docomo was another level of reliability requirement compared to the half-assery that was tolerated everywhere else!)