If there was any doubt in your mind about how much the TippingPoint team wants to be part of 3Com, you should listen to this video of Brian Smith, chief architect of Tipping Point talking to SearchSecurity.com.  Brian comes right out and says that the original idea behind the 3Com acquisition was synergies of putting security into switches and routers.  After about a year of trying to do this, he says that he realized it was a "fools errand" because security is evolving so much quicker than networking.  I don't know, but that is probably not the opinion of Cisco, HP ProCurve, Foundry, Extreme, Enterasys and Juniper who all seem to be doing exactly that. Perhaps it had more to with a clash of personalities there than technology?

Later in the interview Brian states that after the expected synergies never materialized it was decided to spin TippingPoint off on its own IPO. Luckily they had retained their own identity which Brian says may not have been possible if they were acquired by Cisco or IBM. He basically says that the merger was a failure and they wanted to go their own separate ways.  Than the Bain deal put everything on hold and now post-Bain deal they are becoming more and more autonomous.  Though he doesn't come out and say it, his body language is screaming that he cannot wait to be spun out from 3Com.

My advice is to be careful what you wish for.  The security industry is not what it was before the acquisition and without someone's deep pockets behind you and the inability to move out successfully beyond anything besides IPS, TippingPoint may not find it as welcoming as they think.