Ed Meyercord, CEO

Extreme Networks is a networking company based in San Jose, California that was founded in 1996. It designs, builds, and installs Ethernet computer network products for enterprise and carrier grade (metro) networks using the speed and scale of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

Extreme Networks was established by co-founders Gordon Stitt, Herb Schneider and Stephen Haddock in 1996 in California, USA, with its first offices located in Cupertino, which later moved to Santa Clara, and later to San Jose. Early investors included Norwest Venture Partners, AVI Capital Management, Trinity Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Gordon Stitt was a co-founder and served as chief executive officer until August 2006, when he retired and became chairman of the board of directors. In October 1996 Extreme Networks acquired Mammoth Technology. In September 1997 Extreme Networks aided in providing the first multi-vendor Gigabit Ethernet backbone at the Networld+Interop trade show. The company's first product was the Summit1 Gigabit Ethernet switch, a 6 Port Ethernet Layer 3 switching device featuring dual gigabit interface converter (GBIC) 1000BASE-SX interfaces. This product shipped in 1997 and won the "Best of Show" award at Networld+Interop. The Summit1 was also named the "Best of the Best Grand Winner" for the event. Extreme Networks won Best of Show awards at Networld+Interop five consecutive years, 1997 through 2001 with its Summit PX1 application switch, a Layer 4-7 device.

Extreme Networks introduced its first modular switching products, including the BlackDiamond 6800 and Alpine 3800 switches, in 1999. The initial public offering in April 1999, was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange as ticker "EXTR." Extreme Networks acquired Optranet in February 2001 and Webstacks in March 2001. Extreme had been investors in both companies, which were purchased for about $73 million and $74 million respectively. Extreme Networks announced its first 10 Gigabit Ethernet product in 2002, available with its BlackDiamond 6800 switch.

Extreme Networks' high capacity switch is the BlackDiamond X8, supporting 2.56 Terabits per line card, for data center and enterprise networks. Extreme also produces Summit and ExtremeSwitching branded switches.

In April 2013, Charles W. Berger (from ParAccel as it was acquired by Actian) replaced Oscar Rodriguez as CEO. On September 12, 2013, Extreme Networks announced they would acquire Enterasys Networks for about $180 million cash.

On April 19, 2015, Charles W. Berger resigned as CEO, and was replaced by Board Chairman Ed Meyercord.

On May 20, 2015, Extreme Networks announced a restructuring initiative which included plans to cut approximately 285 positions (around 18% of the global workforce, inclusive of contractors.)

On October 28, 2015, Extreme introduced their new "Connect Beyond the Network" tagline. They also renamed their product lines (ExtremeWireless, ExtremeSwitching, ExtremeControl, ExtremeAnalytics, ExtremeManagement, ExtremeWorks) to better reflect the company branding across the portfolio. 2016 saw Extreme enter a new market with the introduction of ExtremeCloud.

On October 31, 2016, Extreme Networks announced that it completed the acquisition of Zebra Technologies' Wireless LAN business for about $55 million.

On March 7, 2017, Extreme Networks announced that it was acquiring Avaya's networking business.

On March 29, 2017, Extreme Networks announced that it was acquiring Brocade's SRA (Switch Routing Analytics) business from Broadcom.