I caught up with Metcalfe, now a general partner with Polaris Ventures, briefly via BlackBerry to get his thoughts.

On HP buying 3Com:

3Com grew in the shadow of HP, always asking what would Bill [Hewlett] and Dave [Packard] do. The joke was that 3Com was the best of Xerox technology and HP marketing. Best wishes to 3Com and HP,

On 3Com’s legacy as an independent company:

After leaving Xerox PARC, I founded 3Com on June 4, 1979. We were a dot-com before the dots, and I am what in Silicon Valley they call "old money."