Cisco Scoops Up Internet Monitoring Startup Code BGP

In its seventh announced acquisition of 2023, Cisco’s company’s network intelligence arm revealed it has acquired Code BGP, a privately held Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) monitoring company.

Cisco Systems has acquired Code BGP, a privately held Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) monitoring company based in Greece, the tech giant announced on Tuesday.

Code BGP will be absorbed into Cisco ThousandEyes, the company’s network intelligence arm that Cisco picked up via acquisition in 2020. The deal will expand on ThousandEyes’ BGP monitoring capabilities to give the business unit a global view of Internet health, Cisco said in a blog post on the purchase.

The deal marks the seventh announced acquisition so far in 2023 for Cisco.

The two companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

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BGP is an essential technology for the function of the internet, but it’s complex, which makes detecting and troubleshooting incidents difficult, especially at scale, said Joe Vaccaro, vice president of product for Cisco ThousandEyes, in his blog post.

“This year alone, more than 6,000 incidents of BGP hijacks, route leaks, and other issues occurred across the many thousands of networks that make up the Internet. Navigating these incidents requires quick detection and remediation to avoid downtime and protect users, making BGP visibility an essential capability for organizations that rely on the Internet to connect customers, employees, and business systems to applications and services,” he said.

Code BGP injected into Cisco ThousandEyes team will increase Cisco’s BGP monitoring capabilities and grow the company’s pool of internet research and engineering talent, Vaccaro said.

The Code BGP team consists of renowned BGP experts who are well-versed in internet routing and measurement who will be joining Cisco ThounsandEyes, the companies said.

Code BGP was founded in 2021 and has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, according to Crunchbase.

Cisco has gone on an acquisition spree this year. Among those deals was its Armorblox purchase in May, a company that has pioneered the use of large language models (LLMs) and natural language understanding in cybersecurity. In February, Cisco unveiled plans to buy cloud network security startup Valtix and then in March, Cisco said it would acquire Lightspin, a cloud security software company.

The tech giant is expected to announce its full-year 2023 earnings on August 16.