>>>Could you be right about the router manufacturers ? Take a look at the volume of shares traded yesterday 3/25/98.
COMS 21,173,800
CSCO 11,358,600
BAY 3,450,600
ASND 16,050,500 <<<
Darren, Thanks for the summary and the vote of confidence. I know that I am right about this, because I've spoken with three out of four of these firms in the past two weeks on the subject, and the other is slated for next week. I've also discussed this with some of the more "traditional" SS7 programmable switch platform manufacturers who all seem to sing the same song, for some reason.
VoIP and other multimedia-supporting code is going into everything that they make worth mentioning, going forward. Fortune 100s and especially the Carriers are in for a special treat, since they have petitioned these companies for industrial strength network elements, with the attributes I've been talking about and those mentioned below, and that is exactly what they are going to get.
The two largest of the lot tell me that the carriers are going after them night and day, relentlessly, to come out with ITU and Bellcore NEBS-compliant gear that will position them quickly to enter this "unregulated" sector. Scalability and robustness are the other factors that they must deliver on, as well as international ITU/POTS signalling emulation capabilities, of which there are many, many somewhat arcane, by today's domestic standards, flavors. But, how long will this "unregulated" inducement last, I wonder. In any event, the die has been cast, and there doesn't seem to me to be any turning back on these initiatives for them.
As for the next providers over the very near term, I think it was with you several days ago that I suggested that the dominant carriers would take the plunge, probably a lot sooner than most think, and I mentioned in passing that I wouldn't be surprised to see AOL or Yahoo! being among the next players during the interim period. The next day we saw the Yahoo!/IDT announcement. Scary stuff.
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The following is an excerpt from a message I sent another board member via mail. J, note the "[ ]" editing. I told you that I would do this... <grin>:
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""In the gateway sector, I see this [the introduction of _adjunct_ gateway gear in central office switching centers] happening in spades, just as the ISDN adjuncts had a long life in many central offices, with some slight differences. For starters, as someone else began to touch on it in the voip thread, it's happening in dog years! And in some ways it's happening in a different, almost reversed, sequence.
By the time.. no, make that "before" all the standards kinks are worked out of the gateway products, the larger switching-routing engines made by the Ciscos, Bays, Ascends, Lucents and 3Coms [and the like] will be flying high in central offices [with downloadable code revision capabilities to allow for just-in-time- like standards compliance] in Class 5's, in remote access gear, in enterprise routers, in ISP POPS, in Cable Company headends, and in cellular carrier fixed-station gear.
The largest switching centers over time may just prove to be in the NAPs [or the Internet's Network Access Points] [which I envisage becoming partitioned environments over time, with the BOCs and IXCs owning their fair share of the bandwidth real estate, where they don't already. Does anyone here think they are NAP owners due to altruistic reasons?].These [carrier-grade] high-end boxes are coming at the industry like MAC Trucks [in the night].
They will be [high-density] VoIP enabled routers, effectively, which slip into the traditional switch space, and they will be provisioned with all of the emulation necessary to carry voice _and_ data _and_ global switching _ and_ routing, whether it be for POTS, VON, ISDN, BONDed data, multimedia, or whatever. Voice is only the most visible at this time, because it is inspiring [to] the imagination, but it is just the most obvious, and a good beginning. Otherwise, why would one imagine that the ITU IMTC H.323 _video_ conferencing_ standard for ISDN <!!> was chosen?
In the past [during the late Eighties and early Nineties], there were flurries of such ISDN-like adjuncts deployed because legacy switches didn't have the ability to do what the adjuncts could do. I think this time we may see the opposite happening. The adjuncts in this case [the gateways] are there first, and [None of the switches!!] can do what the gateways can do. But instead of seeing the switches upgraded one by one, what we are going to see, In My Humble Opinion, is a [selective] changeout of platforms, partially, to handle the IP model [on an incremental basis], and those new devices will be Layer3-based, and will resmble routers more than anything else, while carrying on all of the usual roles of switches, as well.
This will not mean the elimination of gateways, nor will it sound the death knell for traditional Class 5 ESS switches, by any means, as has been suggested (in fact this [the depreciation bugaboo] has been the argument against VoIP entry by the carriers until recently), rather, the traffic will "know" where to go, either to the newer routing engines or to the older cross-point-like switches. This is already taking place with Northern Telecom (Nortel) and Lucent switches [in selectec RBOC territories, notably SBC's]. It's happening with the help of front-ending [guardian] arrangements made by Ascend, 3Com and others, although the reason for this in the past has been to mitigate ISP traffic-induced central office congestion by all-you-can-eat surfers, ostensibly.
But I see where it is now going. These "bypass" arrangements are really rather ingenious, now that I come to think of it. These will allow the legacy switches to live out there depreciation cycles, and at the same time allow for the traditional carriers to introduce VoIP-based voice services. Pretty smart [eh?], and thank you for asking. This will work, because there will still be a majority of the usership over the next five years, or more, who will continue to pick up that black phone on the desk, or the white phone on the kitchen wall, and dial out [to a cross-town party or in the same central office serving area where it makes little sense economically to introduce another layer of routing capabilities in the short term].
Getting back to your concerns about the architectures of gateways, though, in the past two days I have met with the industry's largest router manufacturers and from what they tell me, their [major] motivation [in the VoIP sector] is coming from the largest possible customer base they have, and that's the carriers. The RBOCs, in particular, are at their doors day and night, and the high-end SS7-equipped devices I've been preaching about on the thread is exactly what they are asking for. This accounts for the rash of press releases on the subject I've been reprinting on the thread from everybody [including] DEC to MSFT to SUN to Ascend to Clarent to Siemens to Bay to 3Com to Cisco to... to... to... The writing is on the wall.
Does this spell doom for gateways? No, but it doesn't brighten their future, either. Gateways will continue to be the mainstay of smaller [ISPs and] carriers, especially those smaller competitors who load up on them now, and are stuck with the same depreciation problems that some argue the LECs will face with 'their' switches, ironically. And there will always be niches where the larger engines are not warranted, and where they could be used to prolong the life cycle of otherwise well-working systems. But gateways will see their peak a lot faster than their bulls think, and they will see a decline after that a lot faster than we all would like to see, but there will always be a need for them in some way. Don't get me wrong, the market will see to it that some gateways go the full distance [as they morph to the levels that I am referring to here], but as long as they are gateways, and not full service nodal engines, they stand a great chance of being integrated out of existence as they now are defined. And let's not forget, I am speaking about gateways, not gateway manufacturers... especially those who can grow into becoming the engine manufacturers of the future. But gateways, by themselves..... ?""
And more...
Best Regards, Frank Coluccio
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