<onslaught of new competition in a category that has been blissfully uncompetitive
for years? I think alot ~75-80% but that prices will have to come down alot - I think
Cisco makes 80% gross margins here.
Looking back at my post, I think it sounds too negative. Lets be clear, I am only
concerned about Cisco's ability to please an investor base that is expecting 35-40%
top line growth based on consensus earnings estimates. It did 31.3% last year. In
the long run, I think Cisco will emerge as a big winner. As will Lucent. Even Nortel.
It is not a zero sum game amongst these three. I am just looking for a much better
entry point.>
good points, a good entry point is between 70 and 75$.
============> here is a sample of a startup in GB router
There are another ten or more companies (startups and others) ready with their great products to compete with csco. One thing for sure, too much competition drives prices and MARGIN down.
Argon Networks scales router smarts
By Jim Duffy
Network World, 01/11/99
Littleton, Mass.
Gigabit router start-up Argon Networks is taking the
Internet scalability issue beyond bandwidth to the
brain of the backbone.
Argon last week touted the route processing
capability of its yet-to-be-released GigaPacket Node
(GPN) router, which the firm claims has the optimal
horsepower for handling Internet peering and virtual
private network deployment. For end users, scalable
processing may mean more reliable Internet service,
Argon claims.
The control shelf component of Argon's GPN
performs all route calculations and processing for
Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4), Open Shortest
Path First and Multi-protocol Label Switching
(MPLS) circuit assignments.
Argon says the GPN control shelf architecture allows
users to scale processing to manage thousands of
BGP4 sessions and up to eight million MPLS label
assignments.
Conversely, Cisco Internet routers and those from
other start-ups may not have enough horsepower to
support future BGP4 peering requirements or reliable
enterprise-to-Internet connectivity, Argon claims.
For now, Argon's control shelf architecture is unique,
analysts say.
But GPN won't be generally available until mid-1999,
so Cisco and other start-ups may have time to
respond. "They may not have to rearchitect
everything, but they're going to have to crank up
processors or put in a second processor," says Bob
Bellman, principal at Brooktrail Research in Natick,
Mass.
================= comment on this
Thousands of BGP4 and eight millions MPLS labels, that's a tall tall order to match. No way in six months time frame, just to test on all platforms take that long. And, boosting performance is not as simple as adding another processor, the architecture may not support it.
imo. |
