 The company was headed by Chip Howes, whose team is the inventor of record for over 30 patents in the area of TCP/IP server load balancing, and are credited with the invention of the technology in 1996.Pharsalia was acquired by Alteon WebSystems of San Jose, California on July 21, 2000 in a stock swap worth about $221 million.Subsequently, Alteon was acquired by Nortel Networks on October 4, 2000.