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Technology Stocks : Bay Networks (BAY)
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To: mr. picker who wrote (4222)4/23/1997 4:43:00 PM
From: drums   of 4270
 
That's a fair question - optics has been hyped as a technique for increasing speeds in computers and voice switches (I think) but I'd be surprised if any of the data networking companies are doing anything with optics in a data switch. The trend there is to add more intelligence along the lines of Layer 3 switching (IP switching, etc.) which attempts to do a portion of what routers used to do and have the routing decisions be made at switching speeds. This is still underway and Bay's Switchnode is one of the first real offerings in this space. But don't worry, routers don't go away, the balance just changes to a lot more (smarter) switches and fewer (but larger) routers. The so-called "dumb" switches *eventually* replace older shared media hubs but this last part will take some time. There needs to be more applications that demand high speeds before this last part happens. As fort the "smart" switches, the next stage is to get these Layer 3 "smarts" into silicon and drive down the cost of goods (increase profit margins).
I'm not an expert in the area of optics - maybe someone else can chime in - but optics are more condusive to elementary decisions (yes/no) and not complex routing decisions. The cost of optics don't outweigh the speed if you still need a relatively slow CPU to make routing decisions.
I hope this helps.
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