Hi Kenneth, sorry for not responding earlier....very busy these days, trying to launch a new Internet based service in Europe.
QoS down to the lambda level probably means not having to change from light waves to electic impulses. This is not really a provisioning of service issue but removing the bottleneck at the switching points in the core networks where everything slows down as lights get converted to elctro-mechanical signals in order to figure out where to switch the calls to and then reconverting-regenerating into light form before transmitting the waves to the next switching junction.
So this is still a bandwidth issue -- and it's a critical issue because the core optical networks can transmit tremendous amount of data but all this thoroughput is gummed up the switching points.
With respect to Gary's assertion that bandwidth is not important (because he thinks it will ultimately be free!) and that provisioning is where it's at.......he is really talking about value-added intelligence at the network level. Routers read the header packets and can then deal with the stream of data it receives accordingly.....this is not really provisioning of services so I am not sure what he is really talking about.
You know, one of the problem with this business is that everyone throws high-level concepts and acronyms to define everything. Words like Provisioning, IP Company, Gorilla, etc. is very generic and doesn't contain much operational meaning.
To say that NT is NOT an IP company because they are not strong in enterprise/carrier routing is an example of abusing the concept of what it is to be an IP enabling company. NT is DEFINTELY right in the thick of this major upgrade (and it's NOT a forklift upgrade despite what CSCO & Chambers would like to spin.......which is WHY CSCO is not getting any deals with the Carriers -- THEY DO NOT HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY, RESOURCES, EXPERIENCE, AND IMPLEMENTATION/PROJECT MGMT SKILLS to take an existing legacy/hybrid network and MIGRATE to an IP/mulit-media network -- and pretty well all major public networks are hodge-podge of switches/tranmsmission platforms -- old & new. In fact there is not even a consensus among the major Carriers that they need to ditch all their old gear (circuit-based switches, ATM boxes, etc.) and replace them with all-IP platforms. It will likely happen but as always, the Carriers will migrate their existing platforms as is required NOT because CSCO believes that all-IP platform is more efficient. (sure having a homogenous network is more efficient but that's simply not the way life works if you have invested hundreds of billions of $ in the existing network!).
Companies like NT, LU, ALA will get the lion's share of the Carrier business as they move to bring new technology and application into their current hybrid network.
I could talk 10 hours about why bandwidth will never be free as well.....but I've done that with Gary many times and this post is getting rather long!
I am EXTREMELY confident that NT has the edge and taken the necessary steps in the past few years to take a huge market share in the all-important public networking infrastructure market. Now NT is really focusing on (as evidenced by purchases like Clarify, Architel, Promatory, Alteon & few others I can't even remember now!) extending their core networking dominance to the Edge/Enterprise niche so that they can become a major player for the ISP/ASP/E-Commerce gateways that will proliferate as PRIVATE enterprise networks get migrated into Service Provider network.
All these trend favor NT's strength and point out CSCO's dilemma in moving their core competency from selling boxes (routers) to the enterprise to selling network-carrier grade infrastructure platforms. Hence CSCO's mad dash to acquire the technolgy/companies that they can leverage to play the Service Provider market...... the question is can they execute -- a BIG QUESTION MARK.....and probably one of the reason why CSCO is not taking off despite their stellar numbers. |
