Cerent

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.

Cerent is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Networking, Optical Networking, SONET, and Telecommunications.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

6.8/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyNetworkingOptical NetworkingSONETTelecommunicationsNetworking HardwareAcquiredCisco

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 6.8/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/cerent: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

Source (apis.yml)

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