Talk:Gandalf Technologies

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Mr Markowitz:

Regarding your re-written Wikipedia article "Gandalf Technologies":

Prior to your 18 Jan 07 re-write of the facts contributed by those who were actually there and know of what they speak -

"(MAJOR cleanup and toning down of what appears to be the pinings of a former employee, several odd claims removed, notably it being "one of the first") "

- did you do any actual research into the facts? Do you have any documented justification against these "several odd claims" and other statements which you have seen fit to arbitrarily delete? Perhaps you could elaborate and explain your action ...

Regards, Glen Chenier Allen, Texas One of Many Former Gandalf Employees

Sorry, I only saw this post now.

"did you do any actual research into the facts" Yes, of course. Now I throw that question back to you: do you have a reference for any of the obviously biased claims the article used to make? For instance:

1) "one of the original high tech companies" - this is obviously not true. The Ottawa area has been a major high-tech hub since the 1950s. Off the top of my head I can immediately think of DRDC, NRC, Telsat, BNR etc, all of which predate Gandalf. By saying "one of the first" the article was inflating Gandalf's historical importance, when in fact it is of no particular note in this regard.

- actually DRDC and NRC are government agencies, Telesat was created by an act of parlaiment in 1971, and BNR wasnt named until 1980s. Ironic, of all the companies you named, only Gandalf was a true entrepenurial enterprise. (I live in Ottawa, and worked at the last 3) - C.Dowdell

2) "weak management, could not produce the required technological change" - What exactly is "the required technological change"? Do you claim to actually know this? It's simply a personal comment about why the author (you?) thinks the company failed.

3) "Locally, however, patrons of Blueline Taxi in Ottawa recognized the name for one of its earliest products" - I'm sure you could name all these patrons? No? Then out it goes.

4) "Gandalf products came to be regarded as pricey and technologically stale." - by whom, exactly? Can you name these people? This one is more likely to be supportable, but without a reference, it falls to the same problem as (3).

5) "with no return to Gandalf shareholders" - obviously if Newbridge bought the company, there was a return to Gandalf shareholders, by definition. I know what it's trying to say, but even that is essentially impossible to demonstrate -- can you specify how much profit Newbridge made from these unnamed technologies?

6) "Gandalf faded from existence not with a bang but with a whimper." - this sort of language is inappropriate to any encyclopedia.

Let me sum up: the writing in this article previous to my edits contained numerous misleading statements, statements of opinion offered as fact, statements that could not possibly be verified, sweeping generalizations, and language that was inappropriate to an encyclopedia. It would make an excellent start for a personal web site on Gandalf, but this isn't a personal web site. By all means, start a Gandalf history site and put up things like this all you want, check out Dot Eaters for an example of how good such a site can be.

Maury 16:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I used to work for Gandalf as well, back in the 1990's. In the article it mentions that Newbridge bought out Gandalf's routing technologies and turned it into a successful product line. Which product line was this? Gandalf's routing and switching technology was far behind it's competitors.

Mitel bought all patents...Newbridge took 1/4 of the employees a year earlier. - C.Dowdell

That claim was in the original article and I simply re-worded it. If it's wrong, please feel free to remove it. Maury 16:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

High speed data networking

The MBAs that remained at Gandalf Technologies after the true techno-genius founder Colin Patterson was ousted rejected the CDDI concept when it was offerred to them on a silver platter.

The reason? It had never been done before and nobody was making a profit from it yet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.183.49.237 (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Cresendo Communications grabbed the CDDI concept and continued development, then were bought by Cisco Systems for their technology. The rest is history; nowadays 100 Mb/s on twisted pair is regarded as a normal happenstance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.183.49.237 (talk) 19:47, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

"synonymous with modem in the Soviet Union"?

As a native Russian speaker, I have never heard of the word Gandalf being synonymous with modem. I was very curious about this assertion in the article, and started searching — and saw no evidence whatsoever of such synonymous usage ever happening, based on Google search results in Russian, usage in the Russian corpora, or Russian-language e-libraries and tech sources. — Tetromino (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

The important history of Gandlaf Technologies and their StarMaster systems

The StarMaster was a serial networking switching system from Gandalf Technologies. When I was a comp-sci co-op student in the early 90s, I worked for Health and Welfare Canada and helped write software to configure their nation wide StarMaster network using leased phone lines. This was well before they used the Internet. Sadly, there seems to be very little information online about these systems. That part of telecom history is mostly lost. This page has no mention of the StarMaster and what an important role it played. There is a photo of one from the Diefenbunker [1]

Topher67 (talk)