Network management startup Vernier Networks Inc. has grabbed a whopping $26 million in additional funding.

The company got $21 million in VC funding in a series E round led by the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock Associates, and $5 million in debt funding from Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital.

Vernier was one of the original enterprise wireless LAN startups but has styled itself as a wired and wireless network management company and almost totally revamped its management team.(See Funding: Startup Roundup.)

"We've been growing very fast in this market," the firm's CFO Bhupi Singh tells Unstrung. "We need this money to add new channels quickly.

The firm's major rival in the network management market is Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) with its network access control (NAC) initiative.

The size of the round was surprising to some industry insiders Unstrung spoke to. One source even described the funding as "a lifeline."

But Singh laughed off such talk as "industry FUD."

And other sources were more complimentary.

"Vernier seems to be getting traction with its security play," one such source told us via email. "Venrock was the lead on the new round... impressive." — Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung