aid: cerent
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/cerent.png
name: Cerent
description: >-
  Cerent Corporation was a Petaluma, California optical-networking startup, founded in the
  mid-1990s and backed by Kleiner Perkins, that built the Cerent 454 — a compact
  next-generation SONET multiservice provisioning platform that collapsed traditional
  add-drop multiplexing into a far smaller, cheaper, data-aware box for carrier metro
  networks. Cisco Systems acquired Cerent in 1999 for approximately $6.9 billion in stock,
  at the time the largest acquisition in Cisco's history, and the product line shipped on as
  the Cisco ONS 15454, one of Cisco's most successful optical transport platforms. Cerent has
  not operated as an independent company since. Its hardware-era business predated public web
  APIs entirely, and it maintains no developer platform, documentation, SDKs, or API surface
  today — the cerent.com domain is now held by Cisco and serves only an acquisition notice.
  This profile is retained as a venture-portfolio historical record, not an active API provider.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cerent/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- kleiner-perkins
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-status: acquired
x-acquired-by: cisco-systems
x-acquired-year: 1999
x-successor-product: Cisco ONS 15454
x-active: false
x-api-provider: false
x-status-checked: '2026-07-20'
x-status-evidence: >-
  Probed 2026-07-20: cerent.com is delegated to Cisco nameservers (ns1/ns2/ns3.cisco.com) and
  publishes no A, MX, or TXT record; www.cerent.com is a CNAME to redirect.cisco.com and
  returns HTTP 302 to http://www.cisco.com/msgs/aquisition.html (Cisco's acquisition-notice
  page). HTTPS on www.cerent.com fails certificate validation — the host is redirect-only.
x-enrichment-note: >-
  No API, developer portal, documentation, OpenAPI, packages, or event surface exists to
  search, derive, or generate from. No provider artifacts were created and no artifact or
  link pointers were wired (no fabrication). Session WebSearch budget was exhausted, so this
  pass rests on direct DNS and HTTP probes, which were decisive.
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Networking
- Optical Networking
- SONET
- Telecommunications
- Networking Hardware
- Acquired
- Cisco
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1