Going forward, investors are unlikely to put much money into hardware companies that need a lot of capital, such as those in the router, telecom or fiberoptics businesses, Lefteroff says. Storage and servers will likely suffer quite a bit as well. (Compare ) Investors may be more likely to put money into software and services companies, because they require less capital, but Lefteroff did not sound confident about any portion of the network technology industry.

"There were fairly significant decreases this year both in deals and dollars, which I think is a trend we may see continue for a while, until we get some liquidity back into the market," he says, adding that venture capitalists will be "extremely cautious" about where they put their money the next couple years.

There was some good news this week for LinkedIn, a business-networking site that raised including SAP. 

Here's a look at the Top 10 networking venture deals from the third quarter, data courtesy of PricewaterhouseCoopers:

1. Company: